Film Scoring - Techniques For The Modern Composer

1. 1 Intro: - way . No. So it's not a staccato, woodwind ensemble. Staccato was like short notes. That's gonna be best if we want something fast. Let's put this down there. I'm gonna leave it in this tremolo string. And this is something that you'll want to communicate with the director and make sure that you're getting the right feel. I'll tell you a story later about, Ah, some music I wrote that had the wrong feel in it. Ah, and it made for a kind of hilarious discretion. Believe off the melody for now, that if we stop the melody that gives us something we can bring back still in this scene because it's a scene is long now. But wait until women ostinato is. If you had any involvement in pop music or anything like that, you know it as a riff. It's a ref court. Um, so we have seen minor here we have e flat major here, So now we're alternating between two chords and those two chords fit in with the low notes that were happening before. Hey, everyone, welcome to my film scoring class. This is a class that's been kind of in progress for a really long time. I had a lot of requests to do this kind of a class for a while, and I just didn't know how to do it perfectly where I was going to be really happy with it . But after a lot of research and looking around at what's on the Internet already and other people that are making classes, I decided Teoh dive in and do it because I really wanted to make a class that was focused on composition techniques in film scoring and less about the technical side of things. You can find other classes, and I might even make one eventually on, like how to set up your software, how to get sample libraries, all the technical end of it. But what I really wanted to do is focus on this is how you write music to go along with film. Now we will talk a little bit about the technical side of it because we have to. But the majority of this class is about writing music for film, working with film and developing a career as a film composer. I'm gonna show you throughout this class a bunch of my projects that I've done a bunch accuse of written for different films, different film projects. I've worked on some television stuff, some other things. And during this class, we're going to write our own film soundtrack and I'm gonna show you how you confined films that need music in them that you can use right away to build is a portfolio. So I hope you decided. Take this class with us. I had a ton of fun making it. It turned into this huge class bigger than any other class of ever made. Recover tons of stuff. Really proud of it. I'm really excited about everything that's in this class, and I think it's the best class I've ever made. I know I say that every time I make one of these, but this one for really, uh, best class I've ever made Really excited. I hope you decide to jump in and take the class with me. So we'll see you on the inside 2. 2 ToolsAndADemo: Okay, let's dive in first and talk about tools of the trade. So there's a lot of different ways that you can actually put a score together. Ah, when you're working with the film, but in all of them, what you have to do is sink what you're writing with the film, right? So there's a couple different ways that that could happen. Sometimes you'll get the film cut up into smaller pieces. Um, and then it's a little bit easier to manage. Sometimes you'll get the entire film. Um, and that's tricky. Um, because then you've got this, you know, two hour long file that you have to keep track of, and you just put it into a one big sequence, sometimes not always. Um, there are some ways around that, but, um, what I want to talk about now is thes specific software that we're using So you can do this and pretty much any audio software. Um, I'm using logic here. You know, you can also do it in pro tools. You can do it in able to, and you can do it in kind of any software you want. They can all pretty much handle sinking to a film. Now, Now you can also do it in a traditional notation editor like finale Sebelius. Um, I'm not sure if music or can handle a film, but it probably can. That would be for if you want to write like notes and keep in sync with the film, that's a way to test it. You can write a couple bars of music, play it back, see how it fits with the film most of the time. However, um, what professionals air doing is working in, um, an audio program where they're just in putting midi notes or playing it in on a keyboard or something like that? Um, the you know, the big, big name film composers they might write by hand, still some of it. But then they have a team of people to input it into software if they're not using a real orchestra or, um putting into notation software if they are using a real orchestra, So But you know, most of the time I'm sorry to say, were putting stuff into software, and then it's being played by a Midi orchestra of fake orchestra. Most of the time, um, big budget films use real orchestras. Almost all TV shows use synthetic orchestras. Ah, and lower budget films use synthetic orchestras because orchestras air just really expensive. Um, so ah, logic is a pretty popular one to use. That's the software I have up here. Ah, logic is good because it plays nice with Final Cut Pro, which is a video editor. You can swap files between the two. So I've had projects before where they required I used logic. I've also had projects before where they didn't care, in which case I would use able 10 probably able to live because that's otherwise my favorite program. But logic is good, too. So from that, I mean, you're just going to use a lot of software instruments, orchestras, pianos, Elektronik stuff, if you want. Depends on. You know what? You're what you're writing. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time in this class talking about software tools. And, um, you know, like the best sample libraries for orchestras and stuff you can google around and find that , um, in this class, I really want to focus more on the techniques and less on, You know, my favorite orchestra sample library, but we will talk a little bit about the tools like we're doing right now. So, uh, I just thought I'd let you see kind of how a session like this is laid out. This is a project I did a couple of years ago. Um, this is a documentary about transgendered folks, and it's really interesting movie. What's interesting about this one is that because it's a documentary and this is something we'll talk about later in the class because it's documentary Ah, there's a lot of dialogue was a lot of people talking. So when music is needed, it really kind of has to stay out of the way. That's a big thing about documentaries. You got to stay out of the way of the scene. There's very few scenes in a documentary that are just purely for emotional impact, right, because people are almost always talking, Um, this scene, how this movie has one. It's this waterfall scene where it's just a shot of a waterfall, and it has like a kind of important statement. It's the very, very end of the movie. It's the last seen before the credits, so let me just walk you through a quick what I did here. Then we'll listen to it and watch it. I have. If I go all the way back here, I use this piano riff throughout a lot of the film. Just a simple little core progression. Oops. Let me get to the beginning of it. Here. Okay. And that's it. So I use that piano riff over and over. You can see it actually, where I use it. Use it Here. I use it here. Here, variations of it. Here. Here it is, in the beginning, down there, and I guess not the beginning. It's like, not even close to beginning. There is again. There it is again. So I use it as like, a motive throughout the whole, um, film. And in the end here, what I'm doing is I'm taking it. We've heard this a bunch times, and we're gonna talk about motives in this class. Definitely. It's one of our most important things, but I really like using motives like this, So I'm gonna take this motive. I'm gonna build on it, build on it, build on it. I'm gonna add some orchestra to it, and then I'm just going to kind of go crazy with it and really build it up to this to the climax of this waterfall scene. So I think what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna play it for you now. But what I want to do, I think even though I hate to do this, but I think I'm gonna mute the dialogue and I would really like for you to hear this dialogue, Um, for two reasons. One, it's fascinating to, um it gives you a better sense of the scene. However, there's some There's some bad words in it. Um, the use, um, adult language. So and I don't wanna have to flag This class is having adult language, so I'm gonna mute it and hope that's OK. So when you see them talking, just get a sense of it. Um, so I'm just gonna play it up to the waterfall scene and you'll be able to see Let me. I'm gonna move this up here so you'll be able to see what's happening here. This is the piano riff orchestra comes in, and then more orchestra. Ah, another piano kind of thing. But it gets kind of electronic, and it builds to this big swoop at the end. This is a very end of the film. So here we go. And that is the credits. So, um, that's kind of how it looks when something is all put together and nice. I mean, it's it's this huge, long thing you'll see as we go through this class. You know what I'm doing up here? How I'm marking those things, Um, how I'm treating the dialogue. Well, look at this project Milic a couple other projects of mine as well. Um, and, uh, hopefully some that are not mine I'm waiting to get. See if I'm gonna get permission to use those. Um, but that's it. So, for tools, you can really use whatever you want. Most of the time, we use a sequence here like this. Ah, where we just plug in the notes, not using traditional notation. But you definitely can do that. I think I'll be able to show you one where I did that where it was all a choir. So I used traditional notes and I used finale the notation program to do that one 3. 3 WhatIveFoundElsewhere: Okay, One more thing that I want to touch on before we dive into the nitty gritty is I mentioned this in the last video, but I just want to talk about it really quick here. Before I started making this class, I I did a lot of research into other film scoring classes that are out there, and what I wanted to do was teach a film scoring class. That was kind of like the film scoring classes I teach in college sometimes, but none of them really existed. Ah, I was kind of just seeing what was out there, and all I could find was stuff that was really focused on the tech behind writing music for films. So if you, uh, have done some research and found other film scoring classes, they're probably, ah, focused on the tech or the process. So the tech meeting, What software to use? Ah, sample libraries, things like that. Things not really related to writing music, necessarily. Right. Like there about what to do. Once you've written, music is kind of what they're what they tend to mostly be about everything I could find. But when I'm in a college classroom, you know what we're doing is we write something. Ah, I have students. Write something. We listen to it. We evaluated as a class. We say what worked, What didn't work. And what I found was there's probably a really good reason that this doesn't exist as an online class because you can't do that thing. You can't go back and forth and say this works. That doesn't work. So I'm kind of going into uncharted waters here. I'm going to really try to make a class that really focuses on how to write the music for the film. Um, we're gonna look at a lot of examples. I'm gonna show you some that work. I'm gonna show you some that don't work, and we'll talk about why they don't work. And hopefully what I'll be doing in this class is really filling that gap, filling the gap between, um, not a class focused on tech, but a class focused on how to actually write the music. And then you can take a class focused on tech and it will make a lot more sense. Or maybe I'll make one of my own. I don't know. Now you know, we just talked about tech and tools and how to use it. But that's about as deep as we're going into that. I'm not going to talk about how to use logic, how to use able to live, how to use any of those things. Um, I have separate classes on how to use, able to live quite extensively. So if you want to get into that, take those other classes of mine and you will become an expert at using some of these pieces of software that we can then ah, use for film scoring. So with that, let's move on and talk about just straight up dive headfirst right into emotional response . What we're talking about here is how do we figure out the emotional response we're looking for? And then how do we translate that into music? And to add a more complicating factors, something you never have to deal with when you're just writing music on your own? Which is what is the emotional response that the director wants because of the writing music? We are kind of Ah, we have to answer to somebody when we're writing film music. I should say, when we're writing music just on her own. We don't We're the boss. But in film music, we have another person to please and sometimes many other people to please. So let's get into that up next. 4. 4 ANoteAboutCompositionExamples: okay, One last ah thing before we dive in. Um, so I'm actually jumping backwards now, so I just finished making part one of the class. I'm gonna sneak this video in just before because I want to give you a little bit of a heads up throughout this class, I'm going to be working on a film I'm gonna be scoring. This film is an old silent film. We'll talk more about that later. Um, but I just want to 0.1 kind of ah, silly thing out. And that is, while I'm working on this film, I'm going to be throughout this class, really kind of composing in a very kind of transparent way, so that I'm kind of thinking out loud, and I'm telling you what I'm thinking and walking you through my process and using the techniques that we're talking about in the class. This is not going to make for the most brilliant film score that I've ever done. So some of the choices are making our probably not the best choice, but they're the best choice to illustrate the point that I'm making. So if you don't like the Q, I've written and given section. Just bear with me that what I'm actually doing is trying to show the technique. And ah, some options for what we could do That this this is all a very, ah polite way of saying I'm trying to write really fast while I'm doing this so I can walk you through it And just don't blame me if it sucks. Um, it doesn't suck. And I don't think I wrote anything that sucked, but, um, I wrote some stuff that was not as interesting as I probably would have written it had I taken more time and considered more options, so I just wanted throw that out there. Um, okay, that's all. 5. 5 FindingTheEmotionalResponse: Okay. What I want to talk about in this section is the connection between finding the emotion of the film and or the scene. Let's say the scene that's more common and music theory. So first of all, um, finding the right emotion for the scene. Now the reason I'm saying seen rather than film is that the the emotions change wildly in a film. And you might I need to do something happy and one section side and the other and all these other things. So we're really thinking about seen and to use more proper lingo where we're talking about the Q C, you eat the queue. Ah, que is each little musical snippet of sound. So you know you might have ah 100 cues in a film, or you might have 10 cues in a film. In this film, I probably have closer to 10. Um, there's not a ton of cues because this is, ah, documentary. So there's one. There's one, there's one, there's one. And then this is one big one. That's that big ending waterfall scene. Ah, and then there's one more that's not in here, which is this closing track? Ah, that runs on the credits. I was not a track of mine, so I didn't put it in there. So that's cute. So each Q has an emotional response that we want to get out of it. So, um, one of the first things that you can do is kind of look at the Q and say Okay, What? What are we trying to get here? What do you want the audience to feel? Um, and this is something that you'll want to communicate with the director and make sure that you're getting the right feel. I'll tell you a story later about, Ah, some music I wrote that had the wrong feel in it. Ah, and it made for a kind of hilarious thing. Um, but we'll talk about that in the next section when we talk about the process and how you work with the director. But what I'm talking about here, in terms of finding the emotion, is things like, You watch the scene, and if it's a sad scene, you don't want a big techno track, right? Like these are like obvious things. So how can we find, um, the emotional response other than talking to the director you really just have to have to watch it and feel it and work with it. But once you kind of get a sense for it, we can start to use music theory to put some notes to that emotion, right? We have techniques for doing this. You know, we know that certain core progressions air kind of sad certain are kind of happy. Certain chords air sad. Certain chords are happy. Let's talk about that in the next video. A couple genre things, um, that will pull from music theory. 6. 6 GenreAndTheory: So when you're writing a scene, um, we're looking at how we can get down to the emotional quality fairly quick. And the reason that speed is a factor here is that if you're working on a professional film , you don't have a lot of time. You can hear horror stories about this all the time from film composers, but a lot of the times you have, like a week to score. Ah, you know, full to our film on independent pictures. You get a lot more flexibility, usually, but ah, the film scoring processes. The last thing that happens in the film, just about the last thing that happens in a film. So the film is done. There's an opening day scheduled. Everything's ready to go. They just need you to put the music in it. A lot of times we have to work really fast, so that's when music theory can really help us out. Let's talk about genre. Let's say you're in a scene. You're working on a cue that has, you know, it's kind of great Gatsby era. Ah, so, like 19 thirties forties, What you gonna do? Well, first of all, you need something that you need instruments that are appropriate and a genre that is appropriate. So if you're in the thirties and forties, probably gonna use jazz, you're gonna use big band trumpets, trombones, saxophones, drums, bass, piano, maybe guitar. Um, but if it's guitar, it's just strumming guitar. So this so, um, it's not really gonna be a solo. Probably That was pretty rare back then. The guitar was actually kind of a rhythm instrument back then. A percussion instrument, in a way. Anyway, whole different topic. What are you going to use records? Well, if you're writing jazz and you're writing theory, you're going to use a lot of seventh chords you're gonna use, um, ninth chords. You might even use 13th chords. You're gonna stick to your diatonic chord progressions pretty religiously. Meaning you're gonna let those diminished and augmented chords get in there. Um, now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, review some of the music theory classes that I've given you on this site. I have more classes that are on music theory. I'm kind of assuming you already know a bit about music theory as we go forward. Which is why I'm saying things like diatonic chord progressions and 7th 9th and 13th chords You would do best if you really want to get any music theory you got. You got to know those things and the rest of music theory that we're going to talk about shortly. Let's say you're in a scene that happens in the in nineties, and it's ah, kind of dirty club scene or something like that. You're gonna want to use, like, guitars, a rock band feel you're gonna lean on fifth cords for that. That's just a route and 1/5 and you're gonna have a lot of parallels there. So parallelism means like an FC and a C and then a G and A d just going up and down on that fifth chord. That's guitar stuff. Ah, a lot of fifth cords. So we always think about the genre that bits. And then what do we know about the music theory in that genre we know with jazz, we like 7th 9th and 13th chords. That sounds good for that. Ah, and guitar. We like fifth cords. What if it's like, Ah, Caribbean or something like that? And you want this reggae sound? What is the music theory of the reggae sound. Well, you could kind of sum that up with simple triads, major and minor triads hit on the off beats. That gives us that kind of reggae sound, and there's a lot more than just that. You can look up very easily the kind of characteristics of whatever genre you're working in . So if you're working on something and it needs to have a certain sound, you can you know you confined it just by looking around on the Internet pretty quickly, Um, just search for, ah, music theory characteristics of in certain genre name here, so I won't go over all of them with you here. But, um, remember that. That's one thing that we think about right away. We think about what is the genre of this Q or the whole movie in some cases, and what instruments and ah, harmonic ideas meaning music theory can I use to make the scene work? There's one other thing I want toe point out here, and that's modes. Modes can be really important here because modes can really kind of set the emotion up, and you can use modes from scene to scene. So let's jump to a new video really quick and let's talk about modes again 7. 7 Modes: one of things that is going to come up in this class later is the idea of using motives and leitmotifs throughout Ah, whole film. Now what that means is we'll talk more about that later, but I just kind of want to introduce it now. The idea is that we have some ideas that carry through the whole film. Um, let me give you an analogy. An analogy would be like the main character. The main character might be in the whole movie, but he changes, right? They go through something, and that's the whole point of the movie. And musically, we might have a single idea that we keep reusing but change. Ah, to kind of follow the change of the character. So that motive could be a melody. It could be a piano riff like you saw in the film. I showed you a couple of videos ago, that piano, if I just kept using over and over, but changed it as the movie progressed. Eso that the you know what kind of cap the audience going with it. Another thing that could work and often does work is a mode, so we know the musical modes If you've taken some of my other music theory classes, you've looked at the modes. Remember, there are seven modes. They each have a slightly different sound. The the modes air basically a scale that's a little bit different than a major or a minor scale. And they have different kind of feelings to him. For example, um, klezmer music. Let's say you need Teoh come up with a scene where you're writing klezmer music. Now if you don't know anything about klezmer music, Um, the one thing that you want to find is that ah, lot of it is based around the fridge in mode. Slight disclaimer. It's more complicated than that. There are a lot of different modes used in klezmer music, but if you just want to write some stuff that sounds like klezmer music really fast, you can kind of fake it by dis using fridge in for the whole thing. Fridge in is the mode. This is what it sounds like. Klezmer music is often associated with the Jewish faith. Um, and it's used a lot. In fact, there's one very famous scene where it gets used kind of out of context, but it's really interesting. Let's actually look at it really quick in this scene. This is obviously Star Wars. Um, and the famous cantina scene. What we're seeing what we're hearing is a variation of klezmer music. Um, it makes no sense in like this, you know, long ago in a galaxy far, far away world. But this was just something cool that Ah, the composer. And maybe the director had to say in this tool to wanted to do is in this scene he wanted to have it kind of an essence of klezmer music. So that's what they did. Ah, they used instruments related to klezmer music and, uh, the modes related to classical music. So a mode can carry through the whole film. It it doesn't in Star Wars. Let me just put that out there. But, um often will pick a mode, and we might stay with it through the whole film and use it as a theme. If all the music is using the same mode, that can kind of help glue it together a little bit. It's not something that always happens. That's not something that you need to do. But, um, it is a good tactic to Ah, consider. So keep that in the back of your head as we move forward and we start looking at different examples and how different music works in a film. Think about if a mode would work for whatever project that you're faced with. 8. 8 FindingTheMessage: Okay, Next, let's talk about the message of a certain que This is a little different than the emotion. The message is kind of what we want the audience to take away from it. So this if the if the film is done really well, this will be fairly transparent. Um, and your job will be to punctuate what the director has done in the scene. Already. We use this term punctuate a lot. So what that means is, let's say, for example, there's a scene where a ah a guy walks into a bar, there's a shoot out and, uh, he lives the message there is probably that Ah, the guy is kind of a badass. And, ah, he wins the shootout, right? So at the end of the day, what we're trying to say there is this guy is tough as nails. So our job with the music will be to emphasize that so however, we can emphasize that, um, that's what we're looking for in the in the music. That's what's going to make the director happy is if we can write something where where we take the message that the director already has, and we really like beef it up. So it might be that there's some key moment in the scene where where the camera pans and looks right in the eyes of that, the main character. And we do some big low note and just bow. And that kind of says like, this is the person who is the big, tough, mean guy. Um, it's finding those little moments within the Q. That's really gonna help push that message that the directors trying to make. So keep that in mind. As you're working on a film, you always need Teoh reinforce the message, um, and not change the message if you have a score. If you've written music that doesn't work in a scene, um, then you might be sending the wrong message. You might change the message. You be shocked at how powerful music can be in a scene, and it can totally change the message the message might be. This is really a really happy moment, and you put really dark music in there, and all of a sudden, ah, it's a really dark scene because the music has just incredible power. This is why some film directors, one in particular, Quentin Tarantino has said he will never hire a composer. He does not work with composers. He always just buys the rights to music that he can put in the film. Um, he doesn't work directly with composers at all because he has said the composer has too much power. That was, That's a quote from him. So, uh, you can take the message and completely distorted. Now, in this next video, I want to show you a example of doing that of completely changing the message. Let's jump to a new video, then we'll do that. 9. 9 ThrenodyForTheCareBears: OK in this video. What? We're going to see if someone is kind of hilariously taken, Um, a very intense piece of music and put it over something really silly. And if you're in the right mood for this, then you will find this really silly video to be very dark and disturbing. So what the video is is Ah, some recording of the kids pro kids cartoon, the care bears. It's just it's just care bears completely unedited. Um, and the music is actually very famous. Piece of kind of avant garde music called Trinity For the victims of Hiroshima. This is a piece that's kind of about the, um, you know, the bombing of Hiroshima. It's by composer named Krystof Penderecki, and it's actually really beautiful piece, but it is super hard core. Um, it's very dissonant, and it really will change the way you see the care bears. Ah, As you watch this, this goes on for about 10 minutes. I'm not gonna play you the whole thing right now, but I do want to play up until the first commercial. So in this video, they also have the commercials like Saturday morning cartoon commercials in these Saturday morning cartoon commercials. It's like toys, you know, like Barbies and stuff like that. But with this music, it is dark. So I'm gonna play a bunch of this and just let yourself get absorbed in this. And remember the reason I'm showing you this because this is the wrong message. This is interesting music, but the complete wrong message for this Children's program. And it shows you how powerful the music can be because it makes the program pretty dark. Okay, we got way, - way , - way . 10. 10 TempCues: okay, in this section, we're going to talk about the process. So, um, taking a little break from music theory. Um, and just kind of what you can expect once you get a gig. Um, want to get a gig writing a film? Now we're gonna talk about the last thing or one of the last things we're gonna talk about in this class is how to go about getting some gigs. Um, I have a couple tricks that I've talk to students about and, um, gotten Cem some decent work for some students using a couple techniques, so we'll talk about that later. But for now, um, what to do? Ah, what to expect, Um, when you're working on a project like this. So Ah, the first thing that I want to talk about is temp cues. Temp cues can be a blessing and a curse. What attempt you means is that in the film, let me go back to this project that I have open here. Okay, so look at this. Q Um, at this spot in this film for just a second, I want to show you something, so let's just listen to it for just second Okay, So what's happening here is everyone is talking about this one kind of thing, and it's kind of silly, and they're just kind of rushing through an explanation of it. So I want a music that was just really like Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam! You know, like, just like really hitting it over and over and over. But, ah, what the director gave me was actually some music in this spot is called Attempt Que It means the director or the editor or some or the music director put some music into the film already before you got it. Then they just grabbed anything off the shelf that they thought kind of fit what they wanted. So they put music in it. Um, and your job is to replace that music because the music they put in it, they don't have the rights to use. They may have grabbed it from another movie. They might have just grabbed it off a song that's on the radio. They grab it off anywhere. So it's temporary. So a temporary Q. We call it attempt Que So It's good, because when you have tempt used to work with you have, um, something from the director that tells you exactly what they want. Eso it makes It takes some of the guesswork out of it, right. You're kind of like, OK, they want that. Ah, I just need to make something that kind of fills that similar emotion and similar message that that music is provided. Piece of cake, Right? So there's a bad side to tempt use to the bad side is that often very often in my experience, the director will fall in love with the tempt You like They want back you. So you have to make something that sounds kind of exactly like that, Q. But yet doesn't sound enough like that. Cue that anyone's going to get sued. So you need to make something that is totally different and yet completely the same. It's really frustrating. It can be hard if the director has fallen in love with that tempt you then, um, it can turn into kind of a battle to get something that works. You can expect that some of the time directors will will put in temp cues and want you to replace that music with, ah, something that sounds really similar to it or completely different. Um, it's not a sure thing that you get temp cues. I'd say about 50% of the time. In smaller budget films, I get temp cues. Um, I want to show you another one. This is I had a number of projects that used this piece of music as attempt you like, right in a row. There was, like, three projects that were using this piece of music as the tempt you. Let's just hear it. Way. Okay, so how would you work with this kind of attempt? You, Um, what you're gonna want to do is kind of extract kind of the essence of it. So for this, I would say it's actually pretty ambient. Um, so that's something I think about, but it's also got a lot of rhythm to it. So there's Ah, there's a quick rhythm going. The started it at it, adopted a data data going throughout the whole thing. So I want something with a lot of rhythmic motion, but nothing really aggressive. Something really kind of muted. So not like xylophones or anything like that. Something a little softer. It's using steel drums is kind of that sound that it's getting so I could use steel drums. However, that's probably gonna put me too close to sounding just like this. So I'm gonna want to find an instrument that sounds like steel drums but is not a steel drums, like maybe vibes maybe erodes organ If you could do a synthetic one to play fast enough, Um, something like maybe even says something synthetic that, um, has a similar sound but isn't the same. So that's kind of what I take away from this. I take away ambient rhythmic and steel drum ish, Um, so something that sounds like steel drums. So I think about that and then get rid of the music and start writing and just kind of hope that you find something that director legs, so there's no time cues. 11. 11 SpottingTheFilm: Okay, The next thing that happens, actually, I shouldn't say next in terms of sequence like this doesn't happen after temp cues. Um, this either happens at the same time as temp cues or instead of temp cues. Um, but you're gonna want to have a spotting session. A spotting session means that you are you, as the composer are going to sit down with the director and watch the movie you're going. Teoh watched the current edit of the movie, which hopefully is the final edit. And you're gonna take a ton of notes and you're gonna talk through the movie. Sometimes you'll watch the movie twice. I've done it in a situation where I watched the entire movie three times. We were there all day because we talked in between each one. Um and sometimes you'll stop the movie and go backwards and forwards and all that other stuff, but it takes a while. It's a long meeting. Um, depending on the length of the film, what you're gonna do in the spotting session is the director is going to kind of talk to you like you're an actor, and that's good. That's what you want. So you want them to treat you like an actor and they want you and kind of give you the role of the music and any particular part of the film. So they're going to say here, I want the music to be saying this. You know what? It might be kind of abstract stuff, and that's okay. Write it down. You know, like write it down, you'll see the timing markers on the screen and just write down. Ah, the timing of each event and what the director told you about it. Take a lot of notes. Think about what the director is telling you. The most important thing, obviously, is gonna be where they want music and where they don't want music. There's a lot of spots that you might see thinking, Oh, I could do something really cool. Here is the director doesn't want music there. Don't put music there. They have the final say they're the boss in this situation. So we're going to kind of go through all the spots, identify all the cues, and then you're going to get kind of a description of what they want. The emotion and the message to be in each one of those cues. A couple tips figure out exactly where they wanted to start, and I don't necessarily mean the timing. Figure out what, like the flow of a particular Q is like If there's like if he says if the director says, I want the cue to start here you know at 10 minutes. But the the big moment that they want you to hit the big emotional moment is that, like is right at 10 minutes, like that's what they're telling you. What they might actually want is for you to start it a little bit earlier so you can get up to that 10 minutes. You can get to that really big moment without just jumping right in on it. Um, so figure out exactly what the flow of the Q is. Another thing I would ah suggest you don't do is talk about musical specifics with the director like Don't say here I'm thinking about doing this cool ostinato thing. They'll be like this chord progression going. I'll probably have like a minor chord progression going through there with its Austin Ondo underneath. Don't do that for two reasons. One, the director may or may not, but probably is not a musician, so they don't know what any that means. Possibly they might. But But to is that if you put too much specifics in their head before they hear it, they might just say no, I don't like that they might say no, that doesn't sound like what I want. But if you write it and then they hear it and you give them like the full picture of it, then they'll say, Okay, I kind of like that, Um so don't get too specific about what you're thinking about doing musically. Just try to listen and understand what they want. The other thing you want to do in the spotting session is really just kind of built. A report with the director build a sense of trust, make sure that they trust what you're going to dio you understand the story. You understand the vision of the whole film and you get it. That's really one thing you want to get done in this ah spotting session as well. So to wrap that up, the main things of the spotting sessions, you're going to sit there with the director and you're going toe watch the movie might start and stop, Go backward and forwards. You're gonna identify all the cues that need to be written and then some description of what goes in them the same time you're going to develop a rapport, some kind of trust and relationship with the director. That is a spotting session. It is invaluable, like you have to have a spotting session, even if it's just them writing you this long giant email or they basically spot without you . I've done that before. It doesn't work as well, but ideally, you're in the same room watching um, the movie and going through it. Okay, uh, let's move on and talk about budgets. 12. 12 Budgets: Okay, Last thing before we could get into some nitty gritty of writing stuff. Um, budgets. This is something that you do you have to think about as the composer. The film studio is gonna have a certain amount of money devoted to the music for the film. That means a lot of things that means more than just your portion of it. There are other musical things that have to happen. There's typically one budget item in their budgets for music, it says, like $10,000 music. But, um, there's a lot of things that happened. For example, Ah, you might be writing all this, but the closing credits might be attract. They just have to buy from somebody that they want to do that they don't have to. You could write it, but they might want to do that. It's very popular to do so. That could be a huge chunk of the budget. If that's like a big famous pop track, that could be a lot of the budget. But when it comes to budgeting, a couple things you need to think about, first of all is obviously what you're getting paid for the job this is something you should work out with the director beforehand or the budget manager, depending on the size of the studio. Whoever's in charge, make sure you're getting what you need. Um, we'll talk more about this at the end when of this class, when we talk about kind of getting gigs. But, um, typically for a small budget movie, you're paid by the project so you would get certain amount of money for the entire project . Sometimes they will do it per completed minute of music. That's fairly rare in the film world that's more common in the like orchestra music world. But in the film world, I have seen it done that way before, and then sometimes it's happened to me once they just put you on salary and they say We're going to pay you X amount of dollars per day that you're working on this and that was great . You actually like that to happen because then whenever they want revisions, you're like, Cool, I'll revise it. It's gonna take me another 10 days. It's gonna cost you another five grand. But yeah, I'll revise for the rest of my life if you want. That's not common. But it did happen to me once, and it was great. So you need to get that figured out. The next thing you need to know about budgets is who is performing the music? Is it all electronic, or are there rial instruments involved? If it's all electronic, then you might be able to do it all yourself in a program like logic or able 10 or something like that. But, ah, that's more time that you need to put into it. So that's something you can consider when you're negotiating what you're getting paid for the project. If you're If you're delivering the final finished music, meaning you're making it all digitally and then you're gonna hand it over, then that takes a little bit more time and just writing it. If you need to work with instrumentalists, then there's ah, whole bunch more things that come into it, in particular, paying the musicians you have to budget for that. So you need to know how many musicians you need. You need to know probably what your union rate is that will tell you what you need to pay the musicians, so define that out. You can search for your city and the local musicians union and find out what union rate is . That's what you have to pay them usually per hour. So it might be like $200 per hour per musician. It can get quite expensive. Then you have to worry about the recording session. You know, you're gonna have to book studio time. You're gonna have to do all of those things, and that's going to be expensive. You may also need to worry about sheet music. Actually, you will. You will need to have to worry about, ah, sheet music. Preparing that that takes time and money in paper is not free, but it has to get done. So all of those things they dio come together and you need to factor those and in a way that at least makes sure that the musician fees the recording fees and the sheet music fees do not come out of your salary for the project. If they're reluctant to give you ah number and say OK, we'll devote this much money to hiring musicians. If they don't do that, just say OK, well, um, hiring musicians doesn't come out of my contract right like I get paid a certain amount, and then you have to hire the musicians. That could be OK as long as it doesn't it, so long as it's not expected to come out of your pocket. That's the only thing you need to be absolutely sure that you're on the same page about. So keep that in mind when you approach a new project. Okay, let's move on and start getting into the nitty gritty of the types of film music on and what goes into it. 13. 13 DiegesticAndNonDiegetic: okay up next, we're gonna talk about digest IQ music and non digest IQ music. Now, these air fancy terms, um, that mean source music or score music. So I'm gonna eat. Probably used the words source and score because, uh, it's just it just makes a lot more sense. Sometimes you'll see these words digest IQ, but digest IQ music means source music and non digest IQ means score. So let's do non digest IQ first. That means score. That's the stuff you write. Basically. So non digestive music means that it's music meant to accompany a scene, right? Dia jest IQ music means that it's music that is in the scene. In other words, imagine a scene when someone walks over to a radio and turns it on that music that comes out of that radio is digested. Music is source music. There is a source to it. We can see where the music is coming from. Another one would be. There's a scene that takes place in a bar, and there's a band playing in the bar. Um, the music that the band plays is sourced music. It makes sense. There's a reason it's there because there's a band. There we see the source of the music in non digest IQ or score music. It's stuff that doesn't come from anywhere, you know, it's just kind of there floating around to add ambiance. Most of the stuff that we write is that however you do have to sometimes, right? Ah, source music. I had to do it once where I was writing a film. I had the the ah, gig to write the music for this film, and they were still filming it, so I hadn't seen any of it. I didn't know anything about it other than I had read the script, and I knew that, um, they had given me the job, so they called me when they were filming and saying, Hey, do you want to start now writing the music? And I said, I kind of can't cause I don't have any footage. They said, Well, actually, there's a scene we're filming tomorrow where there's this party in this bar and we need a band to play in the bar. So I said, Okay, that sounds fun. So I called up a bunch of buddies and we went to this bar and reformed an ad hoc band, and we played some tunes and we just kind of jammed and like, improvised and made it up. And that was the scene. I was the only movie I've ever actually been in. Um, but, you know, it knocked one of the cues off, but it was sourced music. You know, I had toe just figure it out, but I also had to do it in a way that made sense with what the rest of the music was gonna be. So it was handy that I did that because then when I sat down to write the music, I remembered what key we were in what general sounds we were using and stuff so I could kind of tie it into the rest of the movie. That's the difference between score and source music or digest IQ and non Digest IQ. So let's go into some examples of this and kind of talk about how it works. So well, do that. Then we're gonna talk about ah, kind of where they collide. There's a spot where they collide where something is source and becomes score music in a scene. And there's one really awesome scene that I want to show you of that. So let's ah, move to a new video and talk about school source music. 14. 14 ScoreAndSource JAWS: Okay. First, let's look at, um, one cool example, uh, of both score and source music. So we kind of go from source to score in this. And in this particular example, it involves a shift of perspective, which is something you should know about. So we're gonna look at a little clip from Jaws in this clip. Um, this is from very beginning of the film. And in this clip, what's gonna happen is at first everything is gonna be source meaning we don't hear anything that the characters in the scene don't hear. Everybody here is the same thing, right? The audience and the characters. So we're kind of in sonically in terms of what we're hearing were in the perspective of the character. Now there's in this particular case, there's no source music, but there is a lot of source sound. So we're gonna hear the waves were gonna hear them running. And we're going to hear dialogue. That's what the source sounds are in this. Now, about halfway through this clip, we're going to shift perspective to being the in the eyes of the shark. So when we are the shark, we're going to get some scoring music. So now all of a sudden, that's music, that the people, the the like, humans, the non shark people, they don't hear that on Lee. We the audience here, that so that is score. That's something that exists for just us and the people in the scene. Don't hear it If they heard it, um, if they heard like this creepy music coming from the shark, they would probably run for their lives, right? So this is just for us, kind of. But it it helps to shift the perspective right, because we were these people running down the beach. Now we are a shark and one of the ways we know that we've shift perspectives is this music . So this is something that you might get asked to do in a film where it might just look like it's an underwater scene if you watch this without any sound at all, but the director will tell you, actually, you're the shark here, and that's not clear until there's music on it. So let's watch this scene and you'll see what I mean. So think about once we start to hear music, you're going to be the shark and one of the ways that we know where the shark is. This creepy music that's playing, um it helps a shift perspectives in that way. So check it out and again. Kristie, my, where we going? Swimming. I'm not wrong out when? All right. Oh, wow. Definitely. Well, one. I can swim, Just can't walk. Dress myself. Take it easy. - I mean, So what we have here is once the shark enters, we never really see the shark right in this part. We don't see the shark at all, But we know the shark is there because of that music, even when we're above water and not like looking through the eyes of the shark, we know that it's a shark attacking her because that music was introduced as part of the shark. It's like the shark music, so it kind of serves the ah, the stand in for the character. In a way, this is getting a little heady, but in the beginning we have only source sound. We hear everything that the character here's and nothing more. Once the shark enters, we start to get score, which is an element that the characters on screen don't Here and it helps us with perspective. Okay, with that, let's look at an example of source music really quick, and then we'll look at a combination of the two. 15. 15 SourceMusicExample HighFidelity: okay. There's literally millions of things we could do to find an example of source. But I found one that, um I like for a few reasons. One is that it's just from a movie that I love. Ah, and you should, too. We'll talk about that in a second. The other one is that we actually see him turn up the music in the scene. He, like, reaches for the volume knob. He turns it up and the volume gets louder. So the character directly in her face is interfaces with the music. You know, he touches something, it gets louder. So it's very clearly source music. Now, why are we talking about source what we're talking about Source? Because you should know what it is and that it exists and how to deal with it. When you encounter it. The rest of the class, Really? We're gonna be talking about score. Um, but for these couple videos and ah, at least one more after this, I just want toe touch on source music. Most of the time, we're dealing with score, but, um, sometimes you do have to work with source music. Okay, so let's watch the scene This is from Ah, movie called High Fidelity, uh, which I can't run when High Fidelity came out. Probably around 1990 five or so. Um, it's basically the story of a guy who owns a record store, and he's, ah, kind of a sad dude who owns a record store. It's an awesome movie about music. It has a lot to do with music. And there's a 1,000,000 examples of source music in this movie because they're sitting in a record store right there, always playing music in this last scene. What's gonna happen is, first we see Jack Black Ah, singing with a band in a bar. So this is also source music. Um, there's things happening in the bar, and the music is coming from the stage. We know exactly where it's coming from, so that means it's source music. After that, the main character played by John Cusack is going to give a little monologue, is gonna talk for a second, and then music is going to slowly fade in, um, a Stevie Wonder song, and then he's going to reach for the volume and gonna turn it up. That gives us the impression that the sound has been coming through his headphones, which he's wearing around his neck. And then he cranks it up and we hear it loudly. And that's actually the very, very end of the movie. Ah, the credits roll right at after that. And the song that that he introduces by turning the volume up is the credit song. So let's watch it. Ah, keep in mind that really what we care about with source is that everybody in the scene here's the music, the same as we do. That's one of the main components. The other is that we know where all of that music is coming from. Here we go. Way of making a great compilation tape like breaking up is hard to do. It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off of the killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don't blow your wad, then you've got a cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. Anyway. I've started to make a tape in my head for Laura, for stuff. Philistines didn't make her happy. First time. I can sort of see how that's done way, way 16. 16 ScoreAndSourceEqualsScource: okay, We've talked about score, and we've talked about source. There was kind of 1/3. There's another thing that can happen, and we give it. Sometimes some people use the funny term of scores. Yeah, like scores, meaning it's kind of score, and it's kind of source. It's somewhere in between. The two or another way to look at it is that it starts off as score and turns into source or the other way around. It starts office source and turns into score. You can imagine a case where this would happen where something like that last scene we saw where let's say he turns up the music at a while. He's sitting in that chair and then it cuts to another scene and the music keeps going right. That music was source because he's got a stereo and headphones in the room and he's playing it. But then, as it cuts to a new scene and that music continues, that music is now score because there's no source of it, and the people in the scene probably don't hear it. So this thing scores can be kind of cool. You could be working on a scene where there's a cut like that usually surrounds an edit, but not always. You might be working on a scene where you start writing this scene and the director decides to have that music continue on to where it becomes theme, the background music of a scene so you could score a scene and then they imagine you scored a scene with like, jazz. And then in the next scene, the characters walk into a jazz club and that music is playing. So now that music started off as score and turned into source. This could happen, and it and it happens, like kind of more than you would think. And it's kind of cool. I always enjoy it when I see it in a show. Um, I probably pay more attention to it than most people do. You know, you probably see it a lot, and, um, don't realize that it's happening. But maybe after this you will. So we call that scores. Um, it's kind of a fun trick. It can kind of work is like the glue between scenes. Sometimes, you know, the kind of we would call it dovetailing right so you would start off music in one scene and continue it into the next scene. And it kind of king glue the two together Really well. It's a nice effect. Ultimately, it's a decision that really the director makes whether they want that to happen. But you could, you know, sometimes depending on your relationship with the director, you might try it in a scene and see what they think of it. You never know. Um, okay, I want to play an example of this. This is one of my favorite all time examples of this, but it's a bit long, and we kind of have to see the whole scene to really get it. It's like five minutes. So it's not like super long, but long enough to where I'm gonna cut to a new video. So it's bound to a new video, and then I'll kind of walk you through what we're going to see and hear in this scene, and then we'll watch it 17. 17 ScourceExample BattleStarGalactica: okay. In this scene, this is from Ah show called Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar Galactica was an old show. Um, that was on TV, but I think in the seventies, But then it was remade by the Sci Fi Channel Ah, in early two thousands. It's a really cool show. It's about people in space. I'm a certified nut. So I really liked Battlestar Galactica. This is a scene where two of the main characters, which are kind of, ah Starfighter pilots they finally make their way back to where they lived before they became under attack by, ah, these like kind of evil robots. It's very complicated, So trying to sum it up in a weird way, basically the woman in this scene is returning home. So what we're going to see is they walk into other in her old apartment and they're talking about role department. She's again. Everybody like this place very much anyway. And then she turns on the radio. That music that she turns on is actually a very famous piece of music by the composer Philip Glass. It's called Metamorphosis one. If you want to look up that piece Ah, it's fairly a simple piece of piano music. Um, she's gonna turn on the radio, and that's the music we're going to hear. Then the scene is going to carry on outside of their apartment and other things are going to be happening. But that music is going to continue, so it's going to start as source and it's gonna turn into score. Okay, so let's watch it. We'll watch the whole scene. So the music is metamorphosis. One by Philip Glass. The show is Battlestar Galactica. The reboot, I guess, would say kept turning off the power. Something about not paying the bill. And it's definitely not you. It's my dad. Well, we know one package of noodles. You don't believe in groceries. - You know, I never really liked this place. Anyway. It just doesn't work in the summer here. Just work in the winter. That's a crime. Yeah, after the attack. Never, never kind of crap. Never missed it. Stupid view of the parking lot. Broken toilet in a bathroom. You know, everyone I know is fighting to get back what? They had findings. I don't know how to do anything else. This isn't My ship assures how isn't yours. It says when he wakes up, we'll decide what to do with. I didn't know kids 18. 18 CaptainAmerica: Okay, let's dive into some just like real world techniques. And we're going to start with kind of the big one, the big one that is used in mawr film music than you can possibly imagine. Once I explain this to you, what this thing is and how it works, you're gonna watch every movie you've ever seen. You're gonna say up there's one, There's one, There's one, there's one, um it is a phenomenal technique for film music. Eso Let's get into it. I want to introduce it by talking about opening titles, so we're kind of killing two birds with one stone here. The opening sequence of a movie, uh, can really act as like an overture for, ah, the rest of the soundtrack. It's a place where we can introduce some of the themes we can introduce the instrumentation , and we can kind of set the mood for what the music's gonna do throughout the film. Now I want to play for you to different examples very different. Ah, opening sequences from two different movies, and afterwards we're going to talk about the technique that they're using. And it's the same in both techniques, even though the music is very different. Okay, so this 1st 1 is from Captain America. Civil War. The opening theme. This is by Henry Jackman. Let's just listen to it on and then we'll talk about a little bit. - Okay ? Let's talk about what we heard there. What we heard was primarily orchestra music, right? So we heard orchestra music at the very end. We got a little bit of choir in there. That's cool. Um, so we've kind of introduced those elements. That's great. Let's talk about the kind of main musical material we heard. We heard kind of two different riffs in this. In the beginning, we had this one just repeats over and over, done, done, done it, and and and data and and and and ended It and dirt it that thing and then out here somewhere, it got a little more intense. So that was kind of our second main riff. The harmony that we used was really, really static. The harmony doesn't change a lot. There's not huge core progressions here because we're building on these two riffs over and over and over and over. The very the entire beginning section was that one riff and then it built into the second rift, which is really kind of based on the first. But, um, the second riff had its own kind of level of intensity, but not that much harmony moving around inside it, you know, there wasn't, like, a big chord progression going on there. So it was really just those two riffs combined with extra elements. Right? So we had those riffs and then, you know, there were these orchestra hits uhm, some kind of melodic things popping out, but no big melody, right? Like, let's jump back a little ways here. The thing closest to a melody is that rift Got some percussion, more of that riff choir. So at no point do we get, like a melody, right? That we're like, Oh, we could walk away singing that It's just that riff over and over. And we have a word for that. The word is ostinato. Whenever you need to make something kind of intense. Ostinato is the way to go. We're going talk about what an ostinato is in this section. But this is a great example of it will come back to it, but we use them all the time in opening sequences. We use them and chase scenes. We use them anywhere where we need to be intense and sometimes you can do it. You can use an ostinato for not intense scenes. But more passive scenes to ostinato is probably the most used technique in film scoring. Uh, let's look at one more example of an ostinato in one of my all time favorite movies. Let's go to a new video for that. 19. 19 RequiemForADream: okay. And this next one. This is a film called Requiem for a Dream. It's a bit older movie. I can remember when this came out, probably the late nineties, it came out. It is one of my all time favorite movies and one of my all time favorite soundtracks. Um, what sets this apart is that it's primarily string quartet. It's not a whole orchestra. It's just the four members of a string quartet. A string quartet is two violins, viola and cello. That is what makes up a string quartet. There's some extra stuff in here, like some bells, some Elektronik elements, like some synthesizers. But primarily the whole, um, soundtrack is string quartet with these extra elements peppered in here and there in this opening sequence, you're going to hear exactly that. You're gonna hear string quartet with some electronic elements, a little bit of percussion, and you're going to hear another one of these Austin autos. This one's very different, this one slower. Um, it's a repeating riff over and over. Ah, in this case, you're gonna hear it in kind of like a bell like sound. Ah pointed out right when it comes in and then you can latch your ear on to that and then I'll let it play through for the rest of the opening sequence. Here. This is it. This is the bell thing. Ostinato. - Okay , that's the end of the opening sequence. Okay, So could you pay attention to that bell riff that was happening over and over? If you if you were latched onto that, if you're here was focused in on that, you will have noticed that it did not change for the entire opening sequence. It was going all the way through. Um, it didn't change notes. It didn't change pattern. It didn't change rhythm. That ostinato just kept going, and the other instruments started to build on top of it. But that groundwork of the ostinato, or, in other words, the riff went throughout that entire opening scene. And that ostinato plays a really crucial role throughout the entire soundtrack of this whole movie. We hear it all the time. It's kind of creepy. Um, it comes back in other instruments. It comes back, you know, Slower, faster, higher, lower. But it's always, um, a key element throughout the entire score. And that's what makes a score just a great score. It uses very few elements. There's not a lot of things happening here throughout the entire score of the movie. It's those elements that we just heard the ostinato that little melody sort of. It was kind of a melody in there and the violins, Um, and there was kind of a core progression in here, unlike the other one. But it was a simple core progression that repeated over and over and over, not unlike a pop song. Um, harmonically, this is very similar to a pop song, actually, so that gives us two great examples of an ostinato. Now let's from here. Let's move on and talk about what exactly is in ostinato how you make one and how you work with one. Let's do that and cut to a new video. But, um, if you I want I want you to rewatch this opening sequence and really listen for that bell that that ostinato melody that doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, Doo doo doo Dah Dun Dun duh that going through the entire thing. It never changes. In fact, let's just play it again just so that I'm sure that you re listen to it this time. Focus in on that. See if you can follow it for that entire opening sequence. It never changes. 20. 20 TheOstinato: Okay, So what is in ostinato? Technically speaking, the actual definition is a short melody or pattern that is constantly repeated, usually in the same part at the same pitch. You know what an ostinato is? If you had any involvement in pop music or anything like that, you know it as a riff. It's a riff, Um, when you play a song on the guitar, if it's like a rock sung, you've got a riff and it repeats over and over. Um, not forever. Not for the whole thing. But, um, it's very similar to how a riff works, right? Um, now in ostinato can be low or it can be high. It can be right in the middle. It's usually not in a voice part. It's usually in an instrument part. Um, I can't think of an example where I've ever heard in ostinato in a voice part. I'm sure it exists somewhere, but it's not typical, and it's really popular and film music. What we do with an ostinato is we come up with a repeating pattern that's gonna work that we like, and then we might add, Ah, harmony to it. We might add a melody to it. We might add some percussion to it, but it kind of works as like the canvas of our piece. It's always there. It's always going. You can change it if you want, Like in the the 1st 1 we watched and, um, the Captain America want it changed at one point. Um, but I think the reason that film composers like him so much is that they help you toe work fast. And we have to do that a lot. When we're writing films, you lay down that ostinato and you've got, like, the first layer of your entire, um, que done, you know? Then you can just add things to sweeten it up and make it work with the film a little bit better. But a lot of is done. Um, one example of them that's kind of similar to a riff is you may have heard this song before , if you know the show house. This was this song. It's actually a song by a band called Massive Attack. This was used as the theme song in the U. S. Not in the US. They used a different song for the theme song That original score But this is a great example of an ostinato you're gonna hear in the harpsichord here, this pattern just repeating all the way through, like you hear that? And then soon you're gonna hear a baseline come in. That works with all of those notes. So now we have an ostinato and a baseline that works as a repeating core progression together, all the notes in the baseline work with the US So now that doesn't mean that every note in the ostinato is in every chord that we might do with the ostinato. Because we're doing an ostinato, we can actually get away with a little bit more. You have the repeating pattern in your head. And if a core doesn't perfectly work with the ostinato, Um, because the repeating pattern is in your head, you can kind of, um, create a little bit of tension by having a core that doesn't totally work. Um, work is a strange word in this context. Um, it's gonna work. It's just a matter of how dissonant you're willing to let it get. Um, let's jump into another video where we're gonna write one. Actually, first we're going to talk really quick about how to get started on a project and some some tips for, ah, videos, movies that you can score on your own and, um, and then we'll start a project where we're going to use an ostinato. So let's jump into that really quick, and then we'll be back to Austin autos in just a second. 21. 21 WorkingWithPublicDomainFilms: Okay, so I'm gonna start a project and, um, what I need if I'm gonna really do a film score, what I need is a film to score. Um, now there's a couple ways you can do this and we'll talk more about this. The very end. But for now, um, because I'm about to do it. I just want to point out what I'm gonna dio. Ah, And that is I am gonna find an old silent film and I'm gonna write a score to it. You can do this. You can do this very easily. And this is a great way to both. Ah, get started with, um, experimenting with writing a film score and also a great way to start building a portfolio of projects we've done. The reason we like these old silent films is because they tend to be many of them are in the public domain, which means we can download them. We can mess with them by like adding music to it, and then we can upload them to YouTube and things like that, and we haven't broken any copyright laws like public domain means. It's old enough to where you can use it and share it. And that's okay. So when I'm looking for a silent film, I go to this website archive dot org's. And then you go to video and then go to feature films here if that's what you want to do. And then we can kind of narrow our search if we want. Um, let's say movies and I don't know, Let's do a horror movie. That should be good. Um, the devil's sleep. I've never heard of this one. Let's take a look at it. I'm not gonna watch the whole thing. I just kind of want to get a sense of it. Now it has music. That's okay. Jump ahead a little bit. Newspapers, screaming headlines of race riots, revolution, earthquake, Back of all speed. Okay, interesting. This is not a silent movie. This has dialogue in it. That's okay. I think we can work with that. It depends on ah, if the music stays out of the way, because we're gonna want to pull that music out. Right. But, um, so that we can replace it with our own. Ah, And if we can do that without destroying the dialogue, that would be best. So Let's try it. I'm gonna download it. Well, first of all, we can see right here. Usage public domain. That's what we want. That means we can use it. So let's download it. And what I'm gonna do, actually, is click this little download button here. Nope. If I just click on this MPEG four, which is the best format of all of these for what we're going to dio if I just click on it , it's gonna play it. So I'm actually gonna control click on it and say Save link As I believe the Devil Sleep Put it on my desktop. There we go. So now we're downloading that movie. It's a bit big, so we'll let it download, Uh and then I'm gonna open a session. So do I want to do this in traditional notation or do I want to do it in a sequence? Er I think I'm going to do this in a sequence. Er and then I'll take it over into notation later. So let's open able to live. Remember, whatever sequence or you use is totally up to you. It doesn't really matter. They all kind of work the same. I'm just most comfortable, unable to live, so I'm going to use that. So once this downloads, I'm gonna import it. Ah, as its own track over here. Okay, so I'm gonna let this download, and then I'm going to set up a session. 22. 22 SettingUpASession: OK, I've downloaded my movie. So now I'm gonna go into my sequencer. Now I have this session is set up for, like when I'm making, like, dance music. So I'm gonna get rid of all these tracks. I'm gonna start with a fresh template. The things I like to have is a piano. So I have a piano sound on here. Oh, it's got some effects on it. I don't want that. Okay, there's a piano. I don't need that. So let's make a couple new tracks. Gonna make many tracks. And here I'm gonna put going to kind of think about what I'm gonna use for this. I'm not bound to this, but, um, I probably want to use orchestra. So I'm going to throw an orchestra library on there. Okay, here's orchestra strings. Let's just do a string ensemble. Nice and llegado. That means like lush, um, typically for slow stuff. That's two orchestra mallets, cause maybe I'll do, um, something with that ostinato. Kind of like Requiem for a Dream. These are my different things. Marimba is nice and kind of softer sounding vibraphone is good. Try that. Let's leave it at that for now. I can always add more stuff later. Piano strings in vibes. That sounds fun. Now, any my film. So this all depends on how your sequence or works. But in this one, what I'm going to do is just drag the film onto here like it was its own, like, audio track or whatever. The big file. So it takes a little bit of thinking I'm gonna let go. There it is. So now the movie pops up in a window over here, so I'm gonna brush this back to the beginning. Okay, So now when I play my sequence movie place So here's this opening part. Let's find the end of the opening credits here. There's an ostinato and already job guys, Inspector. Okay, I don't know. So what I want to do is mute this audio. Something's gonna pull the volume of this audio down right up until she starts talking. Don't know, Inspector, that works, okay? Because I want no sound in this, and I want no music, so I'm just gonna mute out all this music and then have the dialogue come back in an inspector right there. Okay. You don't have to do that. If you don't want to. Um so now I'm going to write my music here. Ah, in a Bolton in my software. And then I know some of you want to see it in traditional notation, so I'll jump back and forth a little bit so we can see it in traditional notation as well. Um, but, to be honest, this is probably how I would work on a project like this. Um, one thing about these old movies is that they tend to have really long opening credits. You know, you get all the credits that normally we put at the end. Now we're like, way back around the time this was made, you put Aton of stuff in the beginning, so it's gonna have a really long opening sequence. This one is about a minute and 1/2 long. That's long. Um, but that's okay. We can work with that. Okay, now that we know where to find a movie to practice with and how to set up our session Ah, let's go back to Austin autos and start talking about, uh, composing with Austin autos 23. 23 ComposingWithOstinatos: Okay, so I have my project. Now, I'm gonna try to make this really creepy by making a kind of requiem for a dream style ostinato. Okay, so I'm gonna go to my vibes here. I'm just going to see if I can find enough. Not. I'm just gonna Newell around for a second. No, that's a little Blue Z. I don't want that. No. Okay, there we go. Okay. So I'm just gonna record that in really quick. Just me playing it. Oops. I screwed up. Let's delete that and try it again. Okay. Good. Now I'm gonna lay this through this whole thing, so I'm just gonna move this around now. This is kind of weird. I mean, we're going to get into a kind of using some of the software a little bit, but I'm just gonna lay this out. Ah, right on the timeline and right on the grid. And then I'm going to decide what my tempo is. So here the notes I played Mm. Uh huh. It's get rid of the second pass through it, and let's stretch that out. OK, so now it's kind of in their mathematically perfect, except I might want this a little early. Yeah, I like it right on the line there. Okay. So I'm gonna set this to be a loop so that it goes over and over and over that I'm gonna find a tempo that works well for it. I think a little bit faster. Not quite that fast. Met with these Sustain a little bit more would be like if I put my foot down on the pedal. Okay, that's fun. Oh, now what I should be doing here is figuring out my bike you points like my hit points where there is a significant, like hit and the opening sequence here. Let's just watch through and see if we find one. If we do, I'm gonna market everything's kind of fading in and out here. So there's not like a bam that we need to hit. Not yet, anyway. Still kind of slow and dreamy. No. Okay, maybe some things have changed there. There's not a definitive hit there, but let's have our ostinato stop there for now. Let's just focus on this part up till now, okay? We'll just stop it right there for now. Okay? Cool. That's great. Um, so I found in ostinato. Now, the ostinato I used here is basically C minor because I have see a G and an E flat, and it's kind of built around that, um, I have a couple notes that are not in the cord, but they're in the, um, scale. So I could go to my strings here and just start playing around with C minor. That's like if I did that, it would be exactly Requiem for a dream. So maybe I don't want to do that. That's what I would do if they put in temp cues of Requiem for a Dream for this. Ah, but they didn't. So let's see if I can find something else. It's got a nice I could work. Let's try putting that in there. All right? Okay. This one passes all I need. It's tighten that up. And what I'm doing here is I'm just trying to establish some kind of extra thing to accompany the ostinato, so I'm just gonna kind of make this fall right on our bar lines. Really? Well, okay. And let's loop that and have that go. Let's just see how that works. Except I don't want to start right away. Let's have it come in right there. - So everything in that core progression works with the ostinato. Here's what I didn't like. Um, I'm gonna take this back and Unlu pit. I'm just gonna copy and paste instead of looping it. Because what I was thinking the second time I wanted this to go up. Something's gonna flip this up. Inactive. We get rid of that note. I have your d and A something like an f would work. Well there. Let's try that to the second time. Now I want that to go up again. Let's put a G on the top here. Let's move this low. Note up and let's put this f up. Okay, So all I did was move some of the notes that were in the base to the top. So I just reordered them so that it feels like we're going up here and then down a little bit now. This too. Ah, group pattern will now be my core progression. Let's hear from the top, - who except I heard one thing that I really wish I heard more of, and that was that this note went down to there. Now that's just something that I I heard like this Sounds like it will resolve down to their nicely. Trust me, right? It sounds nice that way. Okay, so I got a good start, So I've got my ostinato going. I've got my core progression going. I have one more idea for this that might, ah, liven it up a little bit. I'm gonna make a new track here. And for this, I'm gonna put another string patch on here, so we're still going to use strings. But this time I want to use tremolo strings. Tremolo is when they go like like that. Basically, it's a little darker. Little creepier. Now, I'm just gonna copy this same thing down, and then I'm gonna mute that so my slow, lush strings aren't happening anymore. But now I have tremolo strings, tremolo strings give a lot more attention. - Okay . I like it. Except for this really low note. Just gets a little awkward. Okay, so I think we have a good start. Um, I've got an ostinato going that's just going to go through this whole section. I've got a chord progression. Remember, you don't need a core progression. I kind of like him eso. I'm gonna put it here. Um, next, let's add some other elements to see if we can finish this out and keep it going. Let's go to a new video for that. 24. 24 BuildingOnOstinatosWithMoreElements: Okay, lets see if we can add some more elements. One other element that I think might help us out a little bit is if we strengthened our ostinato by maybe putting it in the piano. Let's hear what that does. I kind of like that, but it's a lot more delicate. So what if I did that right here? We added in the piano, And we added, in the llegado strings, remember, llegado means long like long phrases. Let's turn those back on and let's also keep the's going. But maybe maybe we can get a little diversity here by moving these up and active. So I'm gonna bump these two up. I don't see what we did. Let's start it right back here. - Okay ? I like it. I think we're on on the right track, and that actually gives me a good idea for what to do here. We kind of gone to like a fade to black. And then we've got this. This person here, one thing that might work really well is let's take ah riff. Let's get rid of our ostinato for a minute. Let's just add one really low note, maybe an octave and I've been working all throughout this and C minor. So let's just do one. Just I'm just gonna hit a big low see and sustain it for a long time because I want there to be a kind of dramatic moment here. So I'm gonna have this piano school Boehm right at the end there. Let's see how that works. Okay, It's pretty good. Accepted to be lower. Let's try that. But that works now. I have one problem here is that I think this is just a little too late, right? Like we're already kind of into that black that fade to black. So what I need to do is make this lineup to be more to be able earlier. Now, there's a cheat way to do that when we're working on a film. Were messing with our tempo all the time. And since this is my only hit right now, I'm gonna change my tempo of everything. I'm gonna speed it up just a little so that this lines up back there. Let's try. That was the little too much. Slow it back down one notch, 1 36 Oh, so close on 35. Okay, now let's just see what comes next. Okay, That's a point right there. I want to be sure something musically happens there. So in this next section, what I wanted to do is I'm gonna go through and just mark my significant points, um, to make sure that I hit him right? So I'm zoom in and first thing, let's just put a mark on where they pop up, see if I can get him to land on beats. If I could get him to land on a beat, that's good. If I can't that's not terrible. There are things I can do. So let's break to a new video and let's talk about marking those points. 25. 25 MarkingHits: Okay, so every piece of software has some ability to put a marker in. Um, for me, it's it's control. Click on a spot and then add Locator. It's called in this, so I'm going to zoom in a bunch more, actually. Let's find exactly where that guy runs across the screen right there. So he enters Right there is probably right about when we see him first. So that's right on a downbeat. And that's great. That's at a locator. And let's call it enter like person enters. Okay, Person's gone right there. Now this one is so close to a beat that we could call it. Let's call it right there. That's in between a couple beats. But that's OK. Let's just call it exit. I might not use that one. Who knows? Let's just keep marking. So I'm looking for more stuff happening right there. So here the cop comes into focus. What about their there? That's that's kind of right when we I understand that it's a cop, so that's a cop. Keep going. Oh, that's a good one. Okay, so here is that person. It's called that person. Call these whatever you want, okay. And now here. This is where the transition starts. So let's added this and let's call it transition. Okay, so now I have these points and they they all kind of lineup on Ah, quarter note, except for this one, is in between 2/4 notes. But that's okay, cause I'm that's not a great one, because that's something leaving. So that's not as important. The rest of these air pretty okay, so I can work with that. If they weren't, I would have to do something rhythmic to make it happen. Sometimes you would change the tempo. Sometimes he would change the meter. It all depends, but, ah, given that they all land on beats, I don't think I need to do that. Let's see what happens. So I've marked these hits. Now I'm going to try to add in some elements to make them Ah, musically significant, really stand out. So let's jump to one more video and then we will finish putting this opening sequence together 26. 26 FinishingUpOurIntro: Okay. So what do I want to do for this 1st 1 where he enters? Let's just hear what we've got going. There's a guy. Okay, um, I might be able to do something with these strings. Let's try to do like, Ah, I try to Do you like that kind of a thing? I'm just gonna try toe put that in this fast as I can here. Like that. Okay. Um ah, I kind of slap really put that in. But I don't really care how sloppy this is, but I do want to get it in the right spot. Let's see what happens there. It's not bad. Um, kind of wish I had a different instrument, something a little more with a little more like punctuation on it. And you know what might work? Well, there's winds, so I'm gonna add winds. And this is something that you know, I have freedom to do this, especially since I'm in the opening section. Um, I can get away with this because ah, I'm just kind of piecing together my elements and figuring out what the soundtracks gonna be. Oops. I added an audio track, not a mini track. That's what I wanted to do. So it's not a staccato, woodwind ensemble. Staccato was like short notes. That's gonna be best if we want something fast. Let's put this down there. I'm gonna leave it in this tremolo strings. Also just for fun. Gonna love it. You know what? Let's do this. Let's use another ostinato. Let's leave that because that has a nice punctuation to it on that works. But we need something else going on here. Let's go back to our llegado strings. I'm just gonna add in oops. Gonna add in a blink little clip here and then what I'm gonna dio is I'm gonna go back to C minor, except I'm going to do something a little more a little faster are really zoomed in here. Um, I want, like, this. This down here is gonna make it louder. So I'm just gonna do, like, a c minor thing. Another ostinato dun Dun, Dun Dun. Let's go to Ah e flat f see e flat. Um, that was weird, Coach. That's loop that, um I love it. Okay, so I shortened the notes a little bit just to make him Ah, stick out a little bit better. Let's have us keep going throughout this whole section. Let's see how that works. Okay, Um, I like this melody, but I just don't like this. The my string sound is making it sound kind of corny. Let's see if we could double it with a piano. I'm gonna duplicate this piano part because I don't want to interrupt the sustain of this. So I'm gonna make a whole another piano part and this duplicate that. I think this sound better if I shift my octaves. Maybe 1/5 way. Got a good some good energy going about this scene. Okay, so let's watch the movie and see how this works. Now, it's pretty good. Okay for the cop, let's take the same thing again. But let's do something to it. So cops kind of running at us. We want the same kind of thing, but let's do it a little different. I'm gonna take it down and active. I'm gonna make it longer moving it like that. I just kind of doubled it up. Okay, let's put that also down in our woodwinds like that as much. Um, Oops. Let's take the whole thing down inactive, cause I think it can work that way. That's pretty good, actually, because that leaves me room for this person thing. And this person thing. When this person shows up, let's take our strings and do something kind of dissonant cause that guy's in trouble or else he wouldn't be doing what he's doing. So I'm gonna do still see minor. See, e g. Except let's add an f sharp in there that's gonna make this super dissonant. Well, not super dissident, pretty dissonant. And let's just blast on that chord and have that last as long as he's there. It is about to there, I think, Oh, he's there all the way till the end. That's great. We can use this as a transition. So let's take this to be pretty long like that. And then we can take the volume of this and faded out. That'll be our transition. That's fine. Okay, not bad. Um, we could finesse this a little bit more and fade these out. In fact, let's do that. It's actually make him longer fades just so that these kind of exit a little more gracefully. Okay, let's try that. So, actually, we're still going here when I change the tempo. We lost the dialogue transition, which I think is probably right here. E don't know. OK, so here's where the dialogue comes in. I don't know, Inspector. Now this latest to rip Frankie Clinton. No, inspector. Okay, so we've actually got a little bit more to do. Um, no. In this opens up. We don't really know the rest of this story yet, which is a little dangerous for us, but my gut is Let's go back to this stuff. Let's take our intro ostinato and put it back right here. Can still fay that out. But I have to fade it back in here. Let's try that, Inspector. Now, this latest to risk If this ended a little earlier, it would be perfect. Let's try that. And in fact, what if let's get weird. Let's combine our second ostinato with our first. So let's keep this ostinato going through this whole thing. Well, just make it a little quieter here, and then we'll fade it out here, see, if are old and our new ostinato works Inspector. Now this latest to rip Frankie, I think that totally works. Let's just finesse the end a little bit here to fade that out. Let's fame this out. Oops. And I might let that fade out over her dialogue a little bit. I'm gonna let this one keep going to okay, Let's hear the whole thing that we made. Let's watch the video. But no , inspector. Now, this latest to rip. Okay, so if this was a project that I was actually gonna wrap up Ah, I still have a lot of work to do on finessing some of those volumes. Um, and the instruments getting things to sound a little bit better. Um, but that's just like a software thing. Um, I'm pretty much happy with this. What we've done is rolled with C minor through the entire thing. Pretty much. Both Ostinato zehr based on C minor. The core progression is just kind of fumbling through C minor and a couple other records. All the other notes or just seem minor. So really simple, actually, but, you know, I've got a pretty good start to it. I could still nip tuck and make things a little tighter, but I think I've got a reasonably good intro here. 27. 27 QuickAnalysisSoFar: okay before we move on and look at the actual notation for this sequence that we've written here for this cute is opening sequence. Let's do a quick little analysis. I kind of blazed through the analysis while I was writing it. Um, and I wanted to show you exactly what I did here. So let's look at each element. First of all, Ah, this ostinato Now, I told you it was really all just seem minor, But let me just show you how exactly here is a C minor chord C, g and e sharp. Now, if you're are sorry e flat Ah, Able to not always right stuff in Sharps. Almost all sequences do. So, um, these air gonna look as d sharp even though we should call them you flat if we're, um, living by the rules of music theory. So I'm probably gynecology flat, because that's just how my brain works. So C g e flat, This is a C minor triad. Now, I've got these other notes in here that are not in the C minor Triad, but if we were in the key of C minor and just played up the 1st 5 notes of a C minor scale . Those noted B c D e flat f g. Those were the 1st 5 notes of C minor right there. So I really just gone up a scale. I've really just gone up a C minor scale here. So, um, in doing that, I have outlined in kind of significant points the C minor triad, meaning it's the lowest note. It's the highest note. Um, the third is not really at any kind of significant point, but this really feels like a C minor triad. But even leaving the Triad away from it. It's the 1st 5 notes of the C minor scale. So keep that in mind. It's going to be very heavily c minor feeling. Um, so with that in mind, let's look at the next element, which is this core progression. So let's do a quick little analysis of what we did here. So this is a four cord repeating pattern. So this top note d sharp D d c. It's probably repeated right here. D sharp, D d c something a scroll down. So that top node is just a higher octave of this line right here, So I don't need to look at it to do an analysis because I have the same notes down here. So I have these two note chords all over the place, right? And that's cool. We could. So we remember from theory that in a to note chord, we can't I always tell exactly what court it is because we need three notes, but keeping in mind that were in the key of C minor pretty strongly because of that ostinato. Ah, we can probably take a good guess at what these cords are doing. So C and D sharp here, let's call that E flat and then we have C minor Triad. Um, pretty clearly we don't have the fifth, but we have the route in the third, which is really what you need. In order to figure out the cord, you can live without the fifth. It's not that big a deal. So cool. So c minor. Here, here we have an a an a d that this is gonna be an interesting one. This is the fourth, um, that doesn't tell us a lot if we invert it and imagine the D is on the bottom. Let's just do it now. we have 1/5. So we could be in a D chord here. The fifth were missing. Is either F or f sharp? We don't really know In the key of C minor. Uh, the correct note would be f but we know from looking at our ostinato up here we have efs. We don't have a sharps, so we could assume there's an f in there that we're hearing in the ostinato. We're not hearing it in the court, but we are hearing it in the ostinato. So that's probably what we're filling out kind of in our head. So let's call that a d minor c minor d minor Now I've cheated. Ah, hair right here because a natural is actually not in C minor. Ah, this should be in a flat if we're sticking to see minor. But I can get away with it because there's no A and r ostinato here we stop at G, we went up one higher. It would be in a flat, so this isn't contradicting with anything like that. Remember, the two chord of our minor diatonic chord progression is ah diminished chord. So what I've done here is a kind of cheated by raising that a flat to a natural and making it a minor chord and not a diminished chord Doesn't really want a diminished chord here so that a is actually not in key. But it's ah pretty safe cheat to do a minor to cord. Okay, let's move on G and D here I have another fifth If I was going to fill that out Ah, and guess what that third is. It could be be or it could be b flat. Let's look at what we have it going in our ostinato We have neither b or B flat, so we don't really know. But in the key of C minor, we have b flat, which would make this a G minor chord. Probably our safest bet. So we have C minor d minor, G minor, All kinds of minor happening here. Ah, f and see for our last chord. Another fifth just moved down. Ah, probably also a minor. But this could go either way. Actually, this is a really interesting one, because in key we have that missing Third would be a flat right there. But we've already kind of cheated ourselves into using in a natural over here. So whether this is a major or minor record, we kind of don't know because we have conflicting information. I believe it out. Just I don't change anything right now, but, um so probably f minor. You could call it enough, Major, though Ah, either way could be fine. So that is our core progression. Just those four chords cycling over and over. Let's see what else we've got appear we have the same chord progression again ostinato again It's the whole bunch of C minor. Okay, let's get to hear. Here's our second ostinato. What do we have here? So just remind you, that's this groups. Okay, that is C C G E flat C minor, big and bold right there. And then we have a couple other notes from our C minor scale. There's an F and S C, another c in an energy. So actually just f everything else is just C minor triad. Except for that f. The one difference that I made is when I did it down here. Yeah, right here. It's playing cc cc And then the second half of the pattern up here, I added an active up there, so it just jumps up inactive, which gives it a little bit of a little bit of energy. Um, really, Just one more thing, I think. And that's this little colorful thing that I added. This little flourish here. Let's look at that. Zoom in on a little bit. All I did here was just run through a C minor chord. So e flat f that's not in it. That's probably just a sloppy piano playing C e flat. Another see? And that's it. So really, just see Minor triad. There's an f that creeped in there, but who cares? School Here's another one e flat. There's that f that creeped in c e flat C e flatters another f ce flat So another see at the top. So just see ah, see minor with the f in it. Here's that dissonant chord we made just to see a minor triad. And remember, I snuck this f sharp in here just to give it a little bit of dissonance. S o. This is just a taunacy minor taunacy minor that a ah, that a natural in the core progression is just kind of the only thing I really cheated on. And I guess this f sharp that's a little bit of a cheap, but, um totally. Okay, so when you're working on something, you know, it's You don't have to think about, um, making a really elaborate core progression or anything like that. Sometimes all you need is an ostinato, um, and a key. And you could be often running pretty fast. Okay with that. Let's look at the notation file. I'm gonna give you that for those of you that like to work in more traditional notation, um, in the next video. 28. 29 WorkingWithNotation: Okay, If you want to work with a project like this in a notation editor, you can, um I've exported what we just made into a notation editor. So here's our ostinato riff. Just two bars repeating. Here's our strings that we entered. Here's our ostinato again And here's our second riff in the two parts with that low know just kind of ugly and crossing over. Whenever you export midi from one program to another, it could get ugly like this pretty easily. There's our ostinato coming back, and here is kind of our fade out of the ostinato. So this is what it looks like on normal sheet music. So if you want to analyze that, you can, uh, I'll give you this file and the next one. Ah, this is a Muse score file. If you've taken my other music theory classes or composition classes, you know about Muse score and that I like using it. It's a free program. If you don't have it, um, you can just download muse score and then you'll be able to open this file and poke around with it if you want, um, so I'll give you this file in the next segment, and then we'll move on Teoh talking about something new 29. 30 Motif and Lietmotif: okay up next, We're gonna move on to a new topic. Um, not to leave. Ostinato is behind because they're probably gonna come up again. But, um, I want to talk about another technique. Something totally different. Um, and this is actually kind of two techniques, but really kind of really only one. Um, this is motive and leitmotif. This is something you've probably experienced before. If you've watched movies you've experiences before, I shouldn't even preface that, um, to very slightly different things. A motive. We probably know what a motive is. You probably you might have a sense of what that might be. A motive is just a recurring melody, something that comes back throughout the film or the piece of music. I mean, this is not a term that's only applies to, ah, film music, but it does serve a good purpose in film music. Imagine a melody that just, you know, keeps coming back to help us remember different things. Um, it works as a kind of, ah, you know, glue that holds everything together. And it could even be an ostinato. Remember, um, this ostinato that we used in this piece for our intro thing we could bring that back a couple different times, you know? And that could be a motive that we use in different contexts. It would mean different things and in different settings. And it would be, Ah, it could be really effective depending on how we did it. Ah, you might remember that first project of mine that I showed you that documentary. I had that little piano riff. It was just, ah, two or three chords that cycled through. Um, it was very kind of quiet and delicate, but it worked. And I used it throughout the whole film. That's a motive. That's something that, um, we use in film scores for a few different purposes. You know, I've said this kind of glue mentality before to kind of hold everything together. I really like working with motives. Um, for one, it, you know, it kind of makes the project go a little bit faster because you've already got a lot of the music written if you're working with a motive, but it also, you know, makes the project work really well, if you have a good motive, if you have a bad motive than don't do this because then you're going to be playing the bad motive like all the time throughout the movie, and you're gonna take something bad and put it all over everything. And then it's just gonna be bad, bad, bad. So don't do that come up with a good motive. But leitmotif is a little bit different. A leitmotif is a motive that we associate with a particular character or thing, usually a character. So let's say every time a certain character enters, they get their theme music. You know, that's a leitmotif. So the bad guy walks in. How do we know he's a bad guy? Cause the bad guy music is playing. That's how we know he's a bad guy. Um, that's a leitmotif for the bad guy. The good guy music is playing. That's great. You can even do it where it's more subtle and for the subtlety we get into kind of opera. But imagine the scene where nobody's talking. Okay, it's dead silent. We see two characters just staring at each other. We hear the music for okay, so the camera pans in on one of the characters, but we hear the music for the other one. The one. We've already associate ID the music we've associated with the other character, all right, but we're staring into the eyes of the different character and hearing the music for the other. Why would we do that? Well, very easily. That's a great way to show that that character is thinking about the other character. We play the the other characters music. While we're looking at the first character and we have this, we we're now creating memories for that character and thoughts. You know, we're in the subconscious of that character through the use of leitmotif that's getting a little deep, but it does happen where you want to do that. Um okay, so let's look at an example of this and then we'll see if we can incorporate it into our project here. I don't know this movie, so I don't know if it's gonna work, but we're gonna try. Okay, So, um, let's look at one of the most common well known uses of leitmotif on that is Star Wars 30. 31 TheGoldStandard StarWars: okay. No discussion of leitmotif is complete without talking about Star Wars. So in the soundtrack to Star Wars Ah, what John Williams did was he created leitmotifs for all these different characters. And some of, um, some, some of them are just leitmotifs for things like the force. Um, And when you listen to the sound track, it weaves a very complicated we like net because you're hearing, you know, Lukes theme and then the force theme. And that's kind of one of the ways that we know that he has the force and all these different things. So ah, it's complicated. And it also made it for when they revisited when they did the prequels. It got really interesting because you can hear, like like Vader's theme in the earlier movies that came that were actually made later, they kind of reconstruct er deconstructed Vader's theme. So the young Anakin Skywalker, who later becomes Vader his theme is, like kind of based on the Vader's theme. It's really fascinating how it works, So check it out. I found this website that, um, has a bunch of different themes. Uh, okay, here's the rebel theme. So every time you hear that? Um, there's something going on with the rebels. Ah, you're supposed to be thinking of the rebels. Here's the imperial theme. The other people also Vader's theme since he is the head of the materials. - Okay , so that's Vader's theme or the imperial theme. And you know, it's worth mentioning that when we use these themes are these motives these leitmotifs we don't You don't have to use the whole thing. You know. It might not be that every time Vader enters, you get that whole long melody. You know, it might be that you get just the first couple notes just enough to remind you of it. Or it could be that in some cases we don't use the theme. You don't always have to use it on every entrance of every character. Right? Um, let's hear another one. This is the force theme, the theme that's supposed to symbolize the force. - Eso That's the force. Let's hear layers Theme. This will be the last one. You know, these these themes work so well that you could almost listen to the sound track and know the story of the movie that we not completely, really, but kinda you know, like you could follow the use of these themes from beginning to end and kind of know what's happening in a little bit of a way. If you understand the light motives and how they work, so there are tons of them. That's just a couple. Uh, there are these things all over Star Wars that makes it a very complicated thing. So in order to understand a little bit more about this, um, let's look at kind of the ancestor to Star Wars, and that's opera. I think opera is the ancestor of modern film, and we get this treatment from opera in an opera. It's even more, Ah, transparent that it's happening. Let's talk about that really quick. Ah, and then we'll dive into our project. 31. 32 TheOperaConnection: Okay, so let's get into the mind of the opera composer. Little bit specifically Wagner. Um, Wagner is probably the name we associate most with this idea of leitmotif. Um, and in particular Ah, this work of his called the Ring Cycle. The ring cycle is, um, several operas put together four operas. Ah, that are You know, they make kind of this super opera that we call it a non operas cycle. And we typically call them the Ring cycle. They kinda sword of parallel to the Lord of the Rings. Maybe kind of mixed with Norse mythology, um, mixed with some other stuff. So Wagner put this all together, and you made these very complex system of leitmotifs. Instead of explaining how all of this works, I found the short, little five minute video that kind of walks us through the leitmotifs and how Wagner use them. This is really important for us to understand, because this is where all film composers learned how to do. It was from Wagner. So let's take a quick look at this. Um, really quick. This little documentary on Wagner's leitmotifs, That's just five minutes, and then we'll get back to it. leitmotif simply is a theme that's a sign to a character or an emotion, or sometimes even an object throughout the ring cycle. And Wagner's use of thematic material isn't really unique because composers do that all the time. What is unique is the development of them, you know, in a certain sense, really, if there was no libretto, the music itself tells the story. If you have a certain sense of what some of these motifs represent, what the leitmotifs do, it gives the listener really a clue as to what the character is doing and thinking and feeling and in the best of circumstances. And it happens a lot, and the ring cycle is, if you're really familiar with it, you know these things before the characters on stage do. Uh, the sword theme is perhaps one of the most crucial leitmotifs in the entire ring cycle, partly because it bridges three characters. It goes from the end of Rheingold with Vote on, and it goes from Vote on two Zigmund in Val Cura, and then eventually it ends with with Siegfried's death eso it goes through the four operas , and it links three characters and really three generations in the first act of Volker. The first statement of the sword theme happens when Sieglinde is trying to get signals I to tell him, Hey, there's a sword that's been put into a tree over there and it's it's a It's a good sword. If you can pull that out, you can use that to save yourself. And so that's when this first sword theme happens. Ah, uh, and this is repeated several times in that one scene alone, Uh, sometimes, uh, tenderly, sometimes angrily. If there's trouble ahead, we'll move. One note, 1/2 step down, and the entire leitmotif changes. Or, uh, if it's a tender moment, uh, it might be in a higher tessitura, so it's there, all instantly recognizable as the sword theme. But they changed as per the way Theo. The press section is unique in Wagner's ring cycle. Wagner expanded the brass section rushed. The orchestra is basically untouched, but in the brass section he went as far as to fill in the gaps between the instruments. He commissioned three new instruments to be made for his orchestrations. It didn't exist because he had sounds in his head that just didn't exist. in the standard instruments of the day, he actually developed an instrument called the Wagner Tube in which is it sounds like a high pitch tuba thing is what we respectfully refer to as a Wagner tuba. It started life as a German military band instrument way. With Toobin in the ring, he added four Toobin, plus the contra based rumba and the base trumpet to the brass section. So I would say that the brass sections more important in the ring operas than it is in his other operas. As important as we are in those, Wagner was absolutely revolutionary, and I think he was looking for something new and Bey ond what the standard format of opera had evolved to at this point in time. And all of this leads to a whole new structure in a whole new outlook for opera. 32. 33 LocatingLietmotifs: Okay, let's go back to the devil Sleep and let's keep working on this project. So the next thing I want to do is figure out if I can make leitmotifs work for this. Um, so let's just kind of scrub through and say OK, we have this woman. Does this woman show up a lot later and we have this guy I was gonna kinda zipped through. There's a woman again, but this is all still the same scene. Let's zoom out a bit. Here there's other people, a guy in a white suit. There's a woman again, different people. This is where having read the script would be handy, which you usually get when you do. Ah, a film. Okay, so here's what I'm gonna dio. I'm gonna zip through this movie. I'm not gonna make you watch me do it. And I'm gonna try to identify all the spots where we see this woman. Okay, so I'm gonna and then I'm gonna put a marker like this into those spots. So I'm gonna pause the video, do that and come back so that you don't have to watch me watch an hour long movie because that would be silly. Okay. Okay. So I went through and I marked Ah, the main points where ah, we interact with Ah, this woman who I've learned is a judge. Incidentally, this movie it supported. Terrible movie. I'm gonna not recommend you score this movie. Um, it was really not interesting at all, but, um, it will work just fine for our purposes of this class. So, um, this was an interesting one in this scene. They're talking about the judge, which is That woman knows anything. Judge Ballantine. Stupid name. So they're kind of making fun of her. So if we're gonna do the leitmotif thing, that might be a good opportunity to use it because they're talking about her. A couple of their spots. Here she comes. Something I Oh, no, sorry. This is a spot that I just thought would be a good music cue because it's transition. Um, that's not where we get the judge, but I just marked it for later. Um, here's the judge. Yes, your Honor. More than Judge Jerry, more of the judge. And a few more I found. So let's see if we can do the leitmotif thing using the judge. Let's go to a new video and see if we can use this ostinato as the judges theme 33. 34 ComposingLietmotifs: Okay, let's remember what we did back here. So here is our intro that we made way. Okay, here's the judge. No, inspector. Now, this latest to rip Frankie. Okay. I want to try to take this and see if I can use that as her theme later. So I'm gonna copy this out and let's skip the mention of the judge for now and just go to a straight up judge scene. Okay, so here she comes back. E Sergeant, you said on the phone you found a lot of couple of Okay, let's make this scene a little more transparent with, ah, some music. Okay, so I'm gonna put it in. Let's nudge it over here. It's when we zoom in a little bit more so I can get it more accurately right at this start . This is what's great about this. About software that we can really get right where the scene starts. And it might even want to be here early. But let's see. Sorry. Here we go, and we'll just ramp it in. Just a hair. Sergeant. You said on the phone you found a lot of couple of months. Yes, Your Honor. Anything important it might be. I haven't been able to try anything together yet. I'm afraid it's gonna take a little time to crack this case on your car will get home. Let's just let this play out and see how long way for what have you found out? Our had a list of names of everyone I thought could possibly be a link in the case. I've asked about all of them near the results. Fred Smith. Copyist veil. Phony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. He'd also Bob. I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police methods, Your Honor. Well, you never explains anything to be Mrs Valentine. I might be able to know anything about it, but to continue Oberto scouting, as I said before, no one doing. And in Francis Williams, friends of Bob's in the clear. Yes, I know the Williams Children, our homes home. I seem to remember that I am the bungled uncle owned pool. They were coming that night Well, yes. Is he in the clear? We'll tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know Reactions I got to his name weren't what I expected. One kid I spoke to said he knew him, then changed his mind. No, the city had heard of him. Never had anything to do with it. Not a stall around and finally met admitting him at a pool hall. That was possible if those boys wouldn't know him too well. He's new around here, isn't it? That's what I understand. But doesn't it seem funny to you that a boy whose uncle gives him the complete run of his estate should be living in a tiny apartment at a cheap section of town? And Bob says they met while homes working in the cafeteria. Why should hold out to take a job like that? When you put it that way, it doesn't sound too good. Okay, I'm gonna stop it there. These cues are super long. Um, it's just the pacing of these old movies. They made it so that Ah, you know, these scenes air really long. Whereas in modern movies, scenes don't work this way. But that school is interesting challenge. Okay, so we've got this this motive, you know, when we're gonna use this as the judges theme, the judges leitmotif. I need a little something else to happen here, and I have an idea. Go away back to the beginning. I'm going to get my big corps progression right here. Gonna copy that? Because I might be able to use this to, except I'm gonna put in the woodwinds and I'm gonna get rid of this. That's our big That's our big weird cord from the end. And let's save this core progression to come in at a key time. So let's find a moment where it would be good to introduce another element is gonna take a little time to crack this case. Something a little. All right, What have you found out are all right there? So, what do you found out so far? And then the guy starts talking, had a list of names of everyone I thought could possibly be a link in the case. I've asked about all of them near the results. Now, I thought this was gonna be long, but these are all really short. But that's kind of neat, actually. Just having those little punctuation is there. Um, let's boost of volumes of those up. Just a touch for What have you found out? Our had a list of names of everyone I thought could possibly be a link in the case. Very subtle. The subtlety is good here, near the results. Okay, now, right here. We need something new. I have another idea. Check this out. Going to take this core progression and put it in my llegado strings. Which one of these is llegado? That's tremolo. So this one is Lo Gatto. Now, I'm dealing with a core progression here, so I need to make sure it lines up exactly. Okay, Now, I'm not going to use this core progression what I'm gonna do here. I'm just kind of using as a space holder, but I'm actually gonna put here is a c a really high seat. And I'm gonna try to make a little melody happening here. Um, so everything right now is centered around C minor. So I'm gonna make this big, nice, lush melody It started on a C. Let's do that. And let's go me to a B flat and then to in a let's just try that Fred Smith. Oops. My volume is all the way down because I faded it out earlier. Fred Smith. Obviously a phony. No reaction anyway. Bob Letter by I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of okay, I didn't love that melody. Um, let's take that up to D and then this up. Teoh out Kind of a big leap there. Let's try that. G Fred Smith. Obviously a pony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. Don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is who And that came early on accident. But that's okay, because that gives me opportunity to do this. Obviously a phony. No reaction. Anyway. Bob Letter. I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. Oops. Well, obviously a pony. No reaction anyway. Bob Letter. Don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Cherry isn't too familiar with police methods, your honor. Okay, let's do that. And this may be let's roll that back to their okay. Nice little self contained melody, but obviously a pony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police. Okay, now, let's keep building on it for the rest of the scene. So let's do this again. But let's add in the tremolo section. Now let's also add in the piano right there. This will be weird, but let's try it. Fred Smith. Obviously a pony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. I don't get excited. Of course, I don't just use Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police methods, Your Honor. Well, you never explained anything to me, Mrs Valentine. I'm about to know anything about it. But to continue Oberto scouting, as I said before, no one doing. And in Francis Williams, friends of Bob's. Okay, so I'm getting something built up here Kind of like it. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police. Mother, Your Honor. Well, you never explained anything to me, Mrs Valentine. I'm about to know anything about it but to continue Oberto scouting, as I said before no one doing. And in Francis Williams, friends of Bob's in the clear yet another Williams Children our homes home. Remember that time they were coming that night? Oh, yeah. Hey, Emma. Claire. OK, we're getting somewhere. Um, just by using this motive of the judge, the judge is motive. Um, we're really extending out this scene and I'm kind of stretching toe toe, make it fill the full length of the scene. We'll see how it goes. But I'll tell you what comes next. Next. I think we need a little bit of rhythm to liven this up. Not necessarily a whole new ostinato kind of have one idea that's popping into my head. That might work. Well, let's go to a new video. Let's talk about adding some rhythm to this to liven it up. 34. 35 AddingRhythm: Okay, so I want o build intensity here. Ah, little bit and less intensity. And more so, like tension. So what? My idea here is to go to our piano riff and let's actually separate it so I can see where I am. Here. Mm. Right there. Groups. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here is instead of ah, these notes that I've been using, What I'm gonna do is add a little rhythm to him, and maybe I'll just do it with this low. See, what I want is like a dome Doan like that Really low. Kind of reminiscent of that low. See that we hit earlier for that transition. Does he in the clear. We'll tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know. Let's see here. We'll tell you the truth. Okay, One a little bit faster. So I want it on half note here. I wanted a little bit louder. We'll tell you the truth. The honor, I don't know reacts, and actually, I'm going to repeat that whole thing, so check it out. I'm not even gonna change the note. This in itself is going to become another ostinato, cause it's just don't Boehm don't on don't dome going over and over. Oh, yes. Is he in the clear? Will tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know Reactions. I got to his name weren't what I expected. One kid Hoops. Let's get rid of that stuff. That's from my copy and paste problem. So let's repeat the core progression. We'll leave off the melody for now that if we stop the melody that gives us something we can bring back still in this scene because it's a scene is long Another Williams Children homes home. I remember that I am a bungled uncle owned pool. They were coming out your night. Oh, yes. Was he in the clear? Will tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know Reactions. I got to his name weren't what I expected. One kid I spoke to said he knew him, then changed his mind. No other city had heard of him, but never had to think about wearing in this melody. Here know this stuff no other city had heard of him. Never had anything to do with I noticed all around and finally let in beating except away low thing to do with noticed all around and finally met in beating him in the pool hall. That was possible of those boys would know him too well. He's new around here. That's what I understand. But doesn't it seem funny to you that a boy whose uncle gives him the complete run of his estate should be living in a tiny apartment and chief section of town? And Bob says they met while Holmes was working in the cafeteria. Question hold. Have to take a job like that when you put it that way. It doesn't sound too good. Okay, we've got a little bit of rhythm going now. We've got our melodies come back, but it's lower eso it's a little bit different. Let's add in some of our arpeggio toe our piano up here. I think it dealt with. I noticed all around and finally let him beating him in the food home. Possible of those boys would know him too well. He's new around here. That's what I understand. But doesn't it seem funny to you that a boy whose uncle gives him the complete run of his estate should be living in a tiny apartment and a cheap section of town. Bob says they met while homes working in the cafeteria. Why should home? Okay, now let's end this on a high note. Literally. Let's take this. See up. Inactive This one too often active uncle gives him the complete run of this estate. Should be living in a tiny apartment and chief section of town. Bob says they met while homes working in the cafeteria. Why should hold Have to take a job like that when you put it that way. It doesn't sound too good. Have you checked with headquarters? Not yet, but I Can you think of this? Feel good? Okay, that's really nice. I wish the scene ends there and I might just pretend it does. It goes all the way to here. Well, here's what I could do. Let's make this work. Let's not cheat. Let's take all of this, including this. Let's pull this back to where actually does And I think was right here gonna be Now let's extend are based note thing. Our keyboards are core progression, and that's it. OK, now it ends correctly. And let's just, um, have a little bit of dovetail tailing here by just letting this last letting this last note drag out into the next scene. Just a hair just a little bit there. So the next scene starts about here. We've got this note that's going to sustain a little bit into it. Okay, let's watch this whole que e. Sergeant. You said on the phone you find a lot of couple of Yes, Your Honor. Anything important it might be. I haven't been able to try anything together yet. I'm afraid it's gonna take a little time to crack this case on your car. People get Oh, something a little. What have you found out? Our had a list of names of everyone I thought could possibly be a link in the case. I've asked about all of them near the results. Fred Smith. Obviously a phony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police. Mother. Your Honor, you never explains anything to Mrs Valentine. I might about to know anything about it, but to continue Oberto scouting. As I said before, no one knew it. And in Francis Williams friends of Bob's in the clear. Yes, I know the Williams Children. How homes Holmes. Remember that I am a born with duck alone before they were coming out your night. Oh, yes. Was he in the clear? Will tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know Reactions. I got to his name. Weren't what I expected. One kid I spoke to said he knew him, then changed his mind. No. The city had heard of him. Never had anything to do with Noticed all around and finally met in beating him in the food home. That was possible if those boys would know him too well. He's new around here, isn't it? That's what I understand. But doesn't it seem funny to you that a boy whose uncle gives him the complete run of his estate should be living in a tiny apartment at a cheap section of town? No. And Bob says they met Holmes was working in the cafeteria. I should hold. You have to take a job like that when you put it that way. It doesn't sound too good. Have you checked with headquarters? Not yet, but I can't think it doesn't good. I think you should. Frankly, with Margie and those other Children up there, I'm a little worried. I think you have to call downtown, right? Wait. Ok, there we go. Um, that worked out pretty well. Did I just hear the winds? Keep going? Yep. Okay. We don't cut those off. Um, it's It's really simple what we've done here and again. I would probably spend little more time finessing this and getting a little bit better. And I don't know if I want to score through that entire que but to do the leitmotif thing. It works. Um, it can work here, so I'm gonna leave it, Um, and we'll keep building on this as we go throughout this course. 35. 36 OurLongCueSoFar: Okay, now that we, um we've put together this whole que let's hear it in context. So let's start a little bit earlier so that we get into it. Um, we'll see how it works. Here we go. Make the film nice and big for us. Thank you, Sergeant. You said on the phone you found a lot of couple of things. Yes, Your Honor. Anything important it might be? I haven't been able to try anything together yet. I'm afraid it's gonna take a little time to crack this case on your car. Will get. Oh, something a little for what? Have you found out? Our had a list of names of everyone I thought could possibly be a link in the case. I've asked about all of them near the results. Fred Smith. Obviously a pony. No reaction anywhere. Bob Letter. I don't get excited. Of course I don't. I just used Bob's name is a sort of bait. I'm afraid Jerry isn't too familiar with police methods, Your honor. Well, you never explained anything to me, Mr Valentine. I'm about to know anything about it, but to continue Oberto scouting. As I said before, no one doing And in Francis Williams, Friends of Bob's in the clear. Yes, I know. The Williams Children, our homes, homes seem to remember that I am a bungled uncle. Going to pull what? Coming out your night. Oh, yes. Is he in the clear? Will tell you the truth. The honor. I don't know Reactions. I got to his name. Weren't what I expected. One kid I spoke to said he knew him, then changed his mind. No other city had heard of him. Never had anything to do with. I noticed all around and finally let him beating him in the food home. That was possible if those boys would know him too well. He's new around here. That's what I understand. But doesn't it seem funny to you that a boy whose uncle gives him the complete run of his estate should be living in a tiny apartment and a cheap section of town? No. And Bob said they met Holmes was working in the cafeteria. I should hold. Have to take a job like that when you put it that way. It doesn't sound too good. Have you checked with headquarters? Not yet, but I can't think it isn't good. I think you should. Frankly, with Margie and those other Children up there, I'm a little worried. I think you have to call downtown. Right way. Okay. Pretty good. Um, you know, like before I would probably a normal ah. Situations keep working on it to finesse it. And I probably would look at if I really needed to score this whole ah que or if something shorter could be done. But in terms of the leitmotif thing, I think it works pretty well. Um, if you watch the whole movie up to this point, you know, we we heard that theme with the judge in the opening sequence, and now we get it with the judge again, Um, the next time we see the judge. So so far, it's always paired with the judge, and we haven't heard it in the 25 or so minutes in between. Ah, the beginning and this point. So, to us, we might be getting a little sick of that little ostinato, but to the audience, that will be only the second time they've heard it in kind of a while. So I think it works pretty well. Um, quote, let's keep working on this project 36. 37 POV: Okay, The next thing we're gonna talk about is P o V or point of view. Now, this is something where, when you're preparing to write, um, a score for a film reading the script can help. Sometimes you have access to a script, and sometimes you don't, um, in the cases that you don't, sometimes it's for the best, because the script can change. And this, ah, more importantly, the script instruction directions can change. Um, and this is one of them. So P. O. V stands for point of view. It's kind of like what? The camera whose eye is the camera? That's what we're asking, and that has a lot to do with the music. And you can really screw up the music if you don't. I understand the point of view correctly, so let me give you an example. Um, there are Imagine a scene where there's two people in a room. One of them, uh, is dying, and the other one just murdered the other one. So one of them has just recently been murdered and is in the last throes of their life, and the other one is a psychotic killer. So what music are we gonna put in this scene? Well, it kind of depends on the point of view. Who is the camera at this point? Is the camera um representing the emotions of the person dying? If so, we might, you know, be doing this very sad, passionate, like, last throes of life. Like seeing their life flash before their eyes. Kind of, um, it's over. Kind of cadenza of life. The sad thing right? Or is it the psychotic killer? If it is, we might be hearing circus music, right? We don't know what's appropriate. Um, so we have to look at the scene. We look at the camera work to get clues for what the director is thinking here. Um, and sometimes it's as easy as, like Is the psychotic killer looking directly into the camera? If that's the case, then ah, it's probably the point of view of the person dying because it's literally the point of view. Sometimes it's more abstract than that. So what we need to do is kind of watch the scene a couple of times, figure out what the point of view is, um and then right, Make sure the music matches and the music is coming from the right person's point of view. The reason that the script matters is that often this is notated in the script. It says P O. V. Colon, you know, psychotic killer. And then the scene happens. Um, sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't so if you can get your hands on the screen, the script. It becomes clear, however, when shooting, the director might change his mind on that and might decide to shoot it from a different point of view. Whatever What matters is the film more than the script, but the scripting give you a quick So, um, that's why p. O. V matters. If you score it wrong, then you're not. You might still score it in a way that makes for a great scene, and it totally works as a scene. However, the director isn't gonna like it because they're gonna have in their head that, um, they wanted it to be from the perspective of the psychotic killer. And you made the sad scene when it's supposed to be crazy and frantic. Um, so that's why the P. O. V matters a lot. Okay, so with that in mind, let's see if we can find a scene in this movie that we've been working on where we can experiment with the P O. V a little bit. 37. 38 FindingPOVScenes: okay. I found a scene in this movie where we can play around with the P O. V. Now, this is gonna be This is not a great example, but it's the best one I could find in this entire movie. Um, and that's really probably because in this style of filmmaking in this era, um, we didn't play around a lot with the P. O. V. We worked a lot with this thing called the Fourth Wall, where the the camera, the eye of the camera, the camera is observing from kind of, Ah, an unnamed character, right? It's just kind of there watching. So the So the P. O. V doesn't really shift much at all. Um, but there's one scene here where we kind of can play with it, so let's watch it. So here is the scene. Let's just watch a little part of it and then I'll explain what's what's going on here. I got you. They are your friends. I don't see any album trying to help you. Why don't you tell us what they are? I don't want to write. Ah, nobody that see on the world code. Frankie, you want to get this mess cleared up. You'll have to show us that you want to be on the side of law and order. I guess. So What do I have to do? Just give us answers to our question. Now the boy that was with you, but with Okay, so here's what's going on here. Obviously this this person is a cop. This person is a suspect in this crime. Okay, so what's the point of view here? Who who's watching this like we don't really know, right? It's that invisible person that's that's watching it. The camera, right? But if we put this scene in the context a little bit, we can figure out what's going on. So before we do that, though, how would we score this if we didn't know the context? What would we do here? Um, we might do nothing, but let's assume we have to do something here. We could write it from the music from this guy's perspective, which is going to be like, kind of bold and strong, because he's saying he's he's the cop. He knows what he wants, and he's trying to get this guy to say it. His persona is very strong and bold. Ah, we could do it from the suspects point of view here, where he's kind of shy. He's probably a little bit scared. Um, he's probably a lot scared. His his ah personality here kind of shows a lot of fear. Um, he's maybe guilty, maybe not guilty, but he's trying to help the cops because he's scared. So those are the two ideas. However, there is 1/3. Let's go back a little bit with this. Let's go back to here. This is just before what we just saw. So let's watch this and then watch what we just saw again. Oh, I see. Well, let the games keeping them. How these fellows have got you into this, they aren't your friends. I don't see any album trying to help you. Why don't you tell us? Okay, now we see a little bit of a clue that's happening there. Let me give you a little bit more this time. These two are talking about. They're just kind of casually talking about this drug that plays an important role for these body builders in this movie. Let me remind you, this is, incidentally, a terrible movie. I've had to watch it like four times now, looking for these different scenes that we can work on. And, man, this is stupid movie. Anyway, Not relevant to this course, these two are talking about this drug. This guy is the chief detective. He's He's the boss of the guy interviewing the suspect in the next scene and watch what his head does both of their heads do. Right When the scene changes higher, hear things. Tony, don't knock you over like that. You got a bum heart. Oh, I see. Well, let the games Keeping them. How? These fellas got you, OK, Both of them looked over at these two. So I think that's a very intentional move by the director of this who wants us to get in their head into the audiences. Had that. The point of view is from the head detective, this guy's boss and ah, the other guy who he's talking to these two guys that you've got a heart. These two people are who the camera has become because they look over in this direction and then we see this. So they're watching, and we're kind of working on their perspective now, so What is his boss say? The boss wants him to get this guy. He says that guy's guilty. We're gonna get him. That's what we know from this person. So that's our perspective. That's our point of view. Um, So what do we want to do here? Um, we want to do something a little bold. You know, something that says I'm gonna We're gonna get this guy eso I'm thinking immediately without experimenting with it. Yet I'm thinking, Ah, something low. Something with a pulse. Um, I don't think I want to use any of my leitmotifs here because the only real light motive we've used so far is for the judge on that doesn't make any sense here, right? We could kind of make it stretch and say like, Well, they're going to get this guy and he's gonna go in front of the judge. That's kind of a stretch. It could maybe work in a pinch. But I'm not gonna do that here. I think could be better just to do something new here. Something completely from scratch. We're still really early in the movie. Were in the first. Ah, let's see, 10 minutes of the movie here. So, um, introducing new ideas is totally fine. So I'm thinking low pulse rhythmic, but not fast. Something very, uh, certainly very firm and strong. So let's break to a new video, then let's take shot at it. 38. 39 ScoringAPOVScene: Okay, I'm gonna do this. I think I'm gonna do this all in strings just for starters. And I might play around with the instrumentation a little bit after that. So I'm gonna shrink this down a little bit. Here's my string section. I'm gonna want the not the llegado. This is the llegado track. So this is the is the tremolo kind of don't want either of those. Um let me see. I might add another string section string ensemble staccato. I could work Well, it's the kado means short like that. Let's try that. OK? And now let's just put in in this programme. I gotta admit, eclipse first money clip. You might not have to do that in years because I could just sit record and play something, but not really positive what I want to do yet. So everything so far is based around C minor, right? I could stick to see minor. Why not? So let's do an octave of C minor. My other idea would be to go to G orgy minor. Um, because that's the dominant. That's 1/5 away. They worked together well, but they show that we're not like, if everything about the judges. C minor. The cops might be senator on G minor. That would be a good idea. We'll see. Um, so I'm just putting in a little rhythm here. Thank God. You They aren't your friends. Okay, so I think that's kind of cool. Ah, it's good that a little bit more volume I got. Um, there aren't you friends shorten those notes just a little bit. I'm not sure if it's gonna have an effect on the staccato. Got you there. Aren't your friends OK? Kind of cool. Let's do that again. But let's raise that a minor third got you and your friends. I don't see it and trying to help him. Cool. And then let's repeat this. Let's just loop that. Let's make that our riff. Um and then I might add some more stuff. So I'm kind of just making another ostinato here where this four bar pattern is my Austin There Aren't you friends? I don't see it and trying to help him. Why don't you tell us? I don't want to write on over that. I like that tempo. Um, it's a little faster than I was initially thinking, but it fits into the rhythm of their voices. Really? Well, it's not something I normally think about, but, um, you could almost imagine what they're saying is like, Ah, rhythmic like it's like it's almost like they're wrapping. Got you. They aren't You friends? I don't see it and trying to help him. Don't you? All right, Like it fits kind of interesting. Okay, it's cool. Um, let's add another element here. So let's go up to my llegado strings and let's do something that I love to do. Is this my llegado strings? No. This is my tremolo strings. This is my llegado strings. Yes. Hear, what I'm gonna do is this is just a technique that I use all the time. I don't have a good name for it. I just love doing it. And it is completely isolated. Just making a super long and super high note. It's going to stick to a seed that works. Let's hear that got us there. Aren't you how these fellas have got? Um, they are. I got you. Oops. My volume is all the way down. How these fellas got you in. They aren't your friends. I don't see it. I am trying to help him, don't you? Okay, now I want to go back up to the active that I was in. Got you there, aren't you? I don't see it. And trying to help him. Why don't you tell us? I don't want to write on nobody. That's me on the banking. You want to get this mess cleared up, you'll have to show us that you want to be on the side of a loan or a second note. Just got you in there aren't your friends? I don't see it. And trying to help him. Why don't you tell us? I don't want to write on already sexy on the Frankie. You want to get this message, player it up. You'll have to show you want to be on the side of law and order. What I have got you in. They aren't your friends. I don't need em trying to help him. Why don't you tell us? I don't want to write. Ah, nobody. That's me on the world ranking. You want to get this mess cleared up, you'll have to show. Okay, Maybe wrap that up here by going down to an A and then down to a G little melody. Got you They aren't You friends. I don't need em trying to help him. I don't know. I don't want to write on already. Sexy on the world ranking. You want to get this cleared up, you'll have to show us that you want to be on the side of low in order. Okay. Nice and simple. I could beef up that, um, string stuff by throwing into the piano as well. Pianos. A great rhythmic instrument. Got trying to help me. Oh, you want to get this cleared up? You'll have to show us that you want to be on the side of low in order. It's cool. Um, okay. So I'm liking this so far. Let's see how long we can ride this out. So what to do this? Let's go there. What did you get appointed? I was playing pool. You wanted Teoh. You arrested doctors. Your I don't know. Okay, so this is the third time it's happening, and this scene is still going because this Q was crazy. Long like all the cues here. Um, let's add a little more rhythm in here, and let's use this vibes track that we've got. So I'm gonna copy this down to here. What I'm gonna do here as I'm just gonna fill in this cord so it zoom in. Oh, I know. Weaken Dio, watch this. You know, like this. It's just dragged these out to fill this whole thing. So I just got C in an e flat. But let's turn these in the courts, so C minor C e flat G that works. Ah, e flat. If e flat is our route, we could do Ah, cord probably is gonna b e flat, major, actually, uh, g b flat. Okay, so those are two chords now on vibes. They're just gonna hit thes and they're gonna ring. They don't They're not going to sustain forever. This isn't going to sound great by itself. I'm gonna do one more trick, Teoh. Oops. My volume is all the way down again. I keep leaving volumes down in the previous section. Okay, so that's what that sounds like. Soloed. But here's I'm gonna do to it. I'm gonna arpeggio hate it. Now if you've never done this before when arpeggio is is just taking a cord and playing each note one at a time so it makes a rhythm what I can do. Though, um, this is I can just add in our appreciator to it and have it automatically do it. So in my program, I can just drag and our Pesci ater down. Let's say like that. And now it's going to play them one at a time. I could also manually do it, Um, and in any program, you'll have an arpeggio later in there somewhere. What do you think? One thing I'm gonna do is move. I can't do that. You add another low note. That's not the root. It's actually add that all the way through. So I'm gonna put a G all the way through it. G is the same in both chords, and I just want one more lower note there that screws up the rhythm. Well, let's see how that sound. Doctors. I don't know. Let's give that a little bit more volume way. I don't know. Okay, I'm liking that, um that that Ah arpeggio later, Add some nice variety two and gives it more pulse. Kind of. So let's keep going with this. See how long this, I don't know really is gonna go. Okay. Lets call when the cop enters. All right? You think it over for a while. I'll talk to you later, okay? It's called at the end. I'm gonna mark. That is the end. So I'm gonna let this go all the way to their leave that solo out. That's getting a little tiring for this long queue. Let's leave that going. It's maybe take this and let's put it down in the tremolo strings. Let's maybe do it a bunch lower and let's add it to the winds. Let's just see what that does way down again. Give it some good volume to start. This has value way. We've got staccato winds here. It's not really gonna work. Very well. Let's take that out. Okay. With this one, let's fill out this cord to here so that we've got a cord happening ce flat. Let's put the G on the bottom because I like that sound a little bit better. And here we had an E flat major, so that's gonna be an E flat G and B flat. We've got a B flat in the cord, so we just need to add a G. Let's put it down there. Then let's let these go for the rest of the way. Here. Let's do this. That's going to make a good amount of distance right there. And then let's add a d to it. That's also going to make some dissidents. Not a sharp, is that? But I think it will be a nice sound. Let's hear it. Okay. So nice to senseless here in context. In what way? I think this one out. And let's fade out my piano here. Also, I want to kind of dovetail something here. So I'm just gonna leave that Ah, my room Bucks. I'm kind of into that. I don't know. I don't know. All right, e o cool. And that ends. Ah, fairly nicely. I like where that ends. Okay, um, this needs some mixing. I've I've put in everything too loud, so we're burying the dialogue, so I should go through and adjust all those so that the dialogue still sits very comfortably on top of it, But I'll do that later 39. 40 AnalysisOfourPOVScene: Okay, so I have tightened up to mix a little bit here. So, um, I pulled everything down a little bit so that the dialogue is still Ah, easy to here. Let's watch our whole scene, and then we'll do a quick analysis of it. I see. Well, let the games keeping them. How these fellas got, um They aren't your friends. I don't see any of trying to help you. Why don't you tell us that? I don't want to read on already. That's the on the world. Fracking. Do you want to get this mess cleared up? You'll have to show us that you want to be on the side of law and order, I guess. What do I have to do? Just give us access to our now. The boy that was with what was his name? Smith. Freshman. A lot of you know what did you get appointed when I was playing pool? You wanted to play my game for anyone else? A little The night you were arrested. The doctor said you have taken, but what's that? I don't know. Come on. Many Benzedrine tablets. Yeah. What did you get? He gave it to me. you mean Fred Smith gave it to you? Where did he get you? Tell, you know, I don't know. Ranking. Tell us who's behind Robert. Who is supplying kids like himself with many rupees. You tell us that. I don't Honest died on all. You must have somebody you know on a Sorry I told you, but I don't know. All right. Thank you. Think it over for a while. I'll talk to you later. Come on. Okay. Let's look at what we used here. So beginning of the scene, I just started hitting these seas, so I'm really still based on see minor. Um, I have these seas. And then I went up to an e flat so we could call this all one c minor chord because E flat is the third of a C minor chord. And it basically works that way until the strings enter. Uh, the strings here are doing the same thing. But once this starts while this melon, let's talk about this melody before I move on. So this is just C minor. We have a long C B flat, which is the seventh note in the key of C minor. Remember the seventh noticed Totally okay to use in a minor key. It's a nice That's a nice contrast. Then I go down to the sixth note and the fifth note. Um, these are gonna be non chord tones here. The fifth note is in the cord because it's the It's the fifth of the chord of C sharp or of C minor. These are not chord tones, but they're fine. Ah, they're not to dissident. Ah, once. So really, it's all c minor once this enters, what we're getting now is I filled out the court and I turned it into two different chords . So we have seen minor here we have e flat major here. So now we're alternating between two chords and those two chords fit in with the low notes that were happening before. So if we go up here and look at that, the sea the sea minor is happening here, the E flat major is happening here. So I just turned both of these notes into, uh, the root of the cord that's changing. So that's all that's happening here. And then again here. So one thing I did here is I put a G at the bottom so that we didn't just hear root. 3rd 5th Root 3rd 5th Instead, we hear Fifth root 3rd 5th fifth fruit 3rd 5th And here we are we here. Ah, third, because G is actually the third of E flat, we hear Third root 3rd 5th 3rd route 3rd 5th than air ir Pesci ated these two courts so that we're hearing them just in order. When Here we have the same thing that zoom in a little bit on this. So same exact two chords. Except I didn't put the low note in there. The fifth down here are actually I did. The fifth is in the bottom. It's not in the top. And here the third is in the bottom, and that's totally okay. It's just the two triads with the notes rearranged. Then I added a non cord tone here to give it a little dissident, but it's a it's a passing tone. It's in the key. So it's not super dissident. Ah, it's in the key. And then here also in the key, actually the root of the key, which will go back to as this cycles around. Okay, so pretty simple. Just two chords over and over. Ah, filling in this whole sequence 40. 41 SplitIn2: All right, everyone. So here's what's been happening. I drew out a whole outline of this class thinking that it was gonna be ah, really great class. I made the outline toe where I was really happy with it. And then, um, all these other ideas started coming to me for like, Oh, you gotta talk about that. You gotta talk about that. There's all these things that I need to put in this class. So a to this point, I've decided to split this class in two into two classes so that I can totally cover everything I want to, and I don't have to skimp on. Ah, the content. Like I You know, my whole goal here is to give you guys great content and Teoh, um, not just touch on anything, but to fully, ah, go into detail and as much as I can. So, um, I'm gonna make a part two of this class. Um, I kind of have to at this point, because if I try to put in everything I'm going to, it's going to be way too long. So we're gonna split right here. So in the next couple of video isn't gonna give you a couple of wrap up things. Couple things to think about and talk about what's coming in the part two of this class. So ah, please join me in part to you should be able to find it. I don't know if I'll release them at the same time, or if I'll put this one out and then wait to put out 2nd 1 Probably not probably about the same time, because I'm just gonna keep going and keep working on this class. Ah, and then I'll put both out together. So Part two should be available to you. Now, if you can see this one, you can probably find Part two. So I had to do this in other classes where I've split him into multiple sections and students seem to like it students because by doing that, I can keep the price of each one. Ah, very inexpensive and affordable. So, um, join me the next class. Let's do a couple more videos just to wrap some things up, and then we'll, um, progress. And then I'll give you some, you know, like seven coupon links and stuff that I'll get you into the next class and nice and cheap since he took this one 41. 42 ComingInPart2: No. Okay, here's what's coming in part two of this class, here's what's on the agenda. Um, I want to talk about atmosphere and just kind of creating an atmosphere for a scene, especially scenes where that don't have any specific action going on. It's more laid back and we're just kind of setting a scene like Imagine a camera panning over a landscape. Ah, lot of the time you have to write music for that, and you want to create an atmosphere for it. So we're gonna talk about techniques. For that, we're gonna talk about techniques for filling in a string Harmony. This is, ah, more kind of practical thing that I want to talk in a little bit more detail about. We're gonna do a whole section on fight scenes and chase scenes. Ah, what to do in those scenes when you've gotto right, a lot of fast, excited music, we're gonna talk about building tension and foreshadowing to techniques that we use a lot in film scoring that you really need to master. We're gonna talk about music as sound effect. Sometimes music fills the role of sound effects or fully, sometimes even which is a word we'll talk more about in the second half, so don't worry about that. But I will bring you all up to speed on that. And then we're going to close off the second section of this class with talking about how to get started in the film music business. Ah, some ways of building a portfolio. We've already talked about a few, but we're gonna talk about it a lot more, um, building a portfolio, getting that in front of directors. Ah, music directors. Ah, and finding some connections to get your first couple gigs. So that's what's coming in part too. So please jump into that part too. Just you can just do it right now. It's probably online, so just why not, right Register for right now and just keep on going. Um, we've got another many hours of content for you in that next section, so I hope to see you there. 42. We Interrupt This Class...: 43. 43 ThanksBye: Okay, that's it for film scoring class. Part one. I hope you had a good time. Um, please, if you did leave some good reviews for me, that helps out a lot. Um, tell other people that you like to this class that you got something out of it, and it helped you learn how to work with films. I highly encourage you to go on to that archive dot org website, download a silent film or an old film and dive in. Um, why not? You know, like, download something, put it into whatever software you use and start writing. Um, have fun with it. Play around with it. Ah, you can do no wrong. Really. I mean, maybe it's not very good. Maybe it is good if it's, Ah, do something, Upload it, send it to me. Um, I'd be happy to listen to it and give you any feedback that I can, uh, in the next last little section. After this, I'm gonna give you a list of, um, coupons and things to my other classes. Most of my classes are about music theory, composition and music production, primarily using this program that I've been using in this class able to live. If you want to know how to use that program, sign up for one of my classes, um, in it cause I'm gonna give you some discounts on that in the next thing. So in the next video Earth? No, it's not a video. It's just a some text. But there is a downloadable file, so download that. And in that file is a bunch of coupon links that will get you into, ah, my classes. All my other classes for about 10 bucks each. Some of them. Nine bucks, sometimes some of them. 11 bucks, but most of them 10 bucks. So download that. And that will include music theory or film scoring part two. So you shouldn't pay more than 10 bucks to get into that class. With that, I will leave you there, so thanks for hanging out. I hope you had a good time. I hope you learned something. If you did leave a review, tell your friends if you didn't. Then, uh I'm sorry. I don't want to say about that. So join me in part two. Sign up for right now. Let's get started. 44. SkillshareFinalLectureV2: Hey, everyone want to learn more about what I'm up to? You can sign up for my email list here, and if you do that, I'll let you know about when new courses are released and when I make additions or changes to courses you're already enrolled in. Also check out on this site. I post a lot of stuff there and I check into it every day. So please come hang out with me and one of those two places or both, and we'll see you there.